I very much approve of the cookies and gin plan. Have some for me as well.

Oh, hi, I have gin at home. And limes. No cookies, but I don't think I could manage a cookie anyway. I tried a bit of cheese for breakfast and that was still pretty difficult. Stupid mouth, heal already!

I have decided to take tomorrow off. Mainly to sleep as I feel like crap. But I also have a dentist appt to finish off the current dental saga. Then tomorrow night I'm meeting up with some friends for live music.

Have hired a seasonal gardener! I love her! She worked two volunteer shifts so me and Nissan already had a feel for her, and we were both impressed. And we're so far into the year we'll be able to keep her to Christmas and then we're into the new budget, here's hoping she stays on in the spring! The bonus is that there I s no need for spring orientation and training. She gets my extra love for asking, on her third day, why I wasn't Director.

She's smart, has descent plant ID, personable, proactive. I wish I could srop spending time orienting her dmso I can pick her brain and become her best friend.

In ongoing windows news, apparently my shade holder thingies were on the part of the window that was taken out. So I need new holder thingies and probably new shades. Good times.

It is not as deliriously hot today as it has been, hooray!

And I am moving quickly at distance, so it's a little easier to buy new than thrift, especially since I don't own a car or have the ability to carry a couch up three flights of stairs.

God, yes. Practicality trumps everything. I wasn't meaning to suggest otherwise!

I wasn't meaning to suggest otherwise!

Aw, no. That was just my long-winded explanation/justification for why I'm spending so much money on a sofa. I think I'm feeling some vague guilt because some people don't even have a root! My dad would do a double-take and then tell me all about how he's spent less on some of his old cars back in the day!

Went over housing prefs for the move to the new building, happening in the next year. I only request a window and to share with someone from another branch, not my own. There's actually a logic to this beyond me knowing I could survive sharing with my branchmates, but I would find some a bit annoying. So not just cranky me. One, gets good scuttlebutt. But more: If I have to leave behind my awesome IT sysadmin for my systems, at least give me dev or test for them. I can actually see a lot of good coming from it, not just for day to day, but my 'career.'

It'd do more for actual integration & test than the I&T branch accomplishes.

I spent the day at the Crystal Bridges Art Museum, bouncing from exhibit to exhibit and taking a guided tour. Despite having worked on an Art Education program as the only person on the development team with a fine art degree, a lot of the works were unfamiliar to me and there were a lot of pleasant discoveries. I also got to see some old favorites by Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell in person, as well as spending a lot of time gazing at the Georgia O'Keeffe painting that prompted my visit.

I bought a big print of that last to hang in my bathroom where there's some unsightly brickwork. But at least I talked myself down from a beautiful table lamb with a reproduction of The Lantern Bearers as an oval shade by asking myself how much I'd love it with Molly peeking out through the holes she'd have torn in it.

Driving out of and back into Eureka Springs via the western route was a thrilling adventure in its own right. The Ozark Mountains are beautiful, but the roads are like a roller coaster built from blueprints hand-drawn by Katharine Hepburn. I got a good idea of what living inside a snow globe would be like thanks to all the loose maps and papers in my car, and found out that while I enjoy "Don't You Want Me Baby?" "Crazy On You," and "Cecelia" individually, they don't make for a good mash-up.