:: thwaps today upside the head for Dana::

Today is my Friday this week so I’m just trying to get through it. Lots better than yesterday and back to back to back meetings, though!

Occasional Yard Guy is pretty much finished with the yard, though he has to come back to put in some new fence posts at some point. The before/after is astonishing (he took before and after pictures and is going to send them to Tim). He did an amazing job of clearing out all the invasive shit and debris and hauling it away.

Now, the letdown is that him cleaning out the yard DIDN'T automatically transform it into a lovely paradise with a lush green carpet of grass and twinkle lights on the fence and a big not-approved-by-Noise Design hammock in a stand. Apparently we have to do all that ourselves. We're going to need to throw down some grass seed (and now is a good time to do it, because cicadas do aerate the lawn really well) and put in a border of mulch along the fence and sort out what kind of yard accoutrements we want beyond the twinkle lights and hammock (and then obtain those yard accoutrements). But even so, now we have SUCH a good starting point.

Aaaaaargh. Why is my company’s time reporting site the WORST?? We used to have this old creaky version that wasn’t great, and they “upgraded” us to a new one in October and it’s AWFUL. I have to account for my time with about 20 different projects and categories, which would be time consuming enough, but it doesn’t let me sort by project, and when I go through and make sure they’re all next to each other it RE-SORTS them when I hit save!! It also won’t let you save until there’s some time recorded in each category, so unless you do every category of work on a Monday, you can’t enter your time day by day. I haaaaaaaate it.

That's great, Tep!

That's not great, meara.

That sounds like a hot mess, meara! Yikes!

That sounds wonderful, Steph! Back yard in time for summer hammock swaying.

Timelies all!

I've still got one more day of work this week, and I'm not going to be leaving early, given the tasks I will have to do. Gary is taking the day off, and Mr. S doesn't have school, so I'm the only one who has to get up early tomorrow.

I'm hoping I will be able to stop working early tomorrow, we'll see. I keep thinking that I will do stuff and be productive on my own behalf after work since there are hours of daylight I could use when I finish up but I'm generally so tired that I just want to collapse, so getting off early wouldn't do me much good if it just means collapsing earlier...

Just getting back from lunch with my friend Lauren, who I haven't seen since my wedding with JZ 17 years ago!

She used to live in my neighborhood and since she freelanced, and I temped and had periodic weekdays off, I could always just call her up and get together for coffee without any planning. And it was so nice. Proximity matters.

But it was just as easy and fun to talk with her as it's always been, plus an added layer of affection. Hung out for three hours and it flew by like nothing.

not-approved-by-Noise Design hammock in a stand