Just Lauren

Thursday evening I met up with Shari for ice cream. Can you believe I haven’t gotten ice cream at all this summer? It’s August for crying out loud! This is what covid does to me, it prevents me from getting ice cream. 😉 At least Elisabeth has made me a couple of Dole Whips. She’s got my back. Shari and I met up at High Point Creamery and I got their vegan coconut creme brûlée. How fancy is that? It was tasty, and very coconut-y. The evening was a really good one and it ended with Shari giving me homemade vegan chocolate chip cookies that she baked. OMG, they are delicious. And they aren’t flat. And they’re soft. Like, real chocolate chip cookies. I told her any time I want a chocolate chip cookie moving forward I’d be letting her know so she could bake me some. 😉

Yesterday, I met up with my work team at our office for lunch. These team lunches that my manager has set up has been so wonderful, truly. Getting to see my coworkers in person while eating food and talking about whatever we want to talk about? It builds our relationships and our trust with one another and it helps us let off a little steam that covid inevitably builds up in each of us. I had them take a selfie with me so we could document our fun times.

Elisabeth and I got Meta Burger for dinner last night and then watched The Breakfast Club because she had never seen it and I wanted to watch something light and fun. Turns out I totally misremembered that movie, it was not light at all, although it was a tiny bit fun. I guess you could say I still enjoyed it though, and I could appreciate what the movie was. And I’m glad Elisabeth now knows what people are talking about if they reference The Breakfast Club.

Today has been pretty much non-stop for me. My main contributions of the day were cleaning, building two desks and rearranging my office space, baking biscotti for Elisabeth (and for myself, who am I kidding, I’ve already eaten two pieces), and attending a comic meetup.

I had ordered 2 desks from Ikea about 2 months ago and they just got delivered this past Tuesday so today was the day to put everything together. The first desk took me just over an hour and a half to build. I was patient, looked over the pictures carefully, took my time, and it came together nicely. I took a break to bake biscotti and wash dishes and then I started on the second desk. I was really confident with this one because I had just made one so I figured no biggie, I totally got this. And I did. I screwed in screws and shoved in dowels way faster than the first go around. But then I got to this one part, where the desk was mostly made, and I looked at it, and it looked wrong, and I thought, “Oh no, I’ve put this together wrong. What did I do? At what point did I mess up?” I decided I had to take the base apart from the top and flip it around. So I attempted to undo these screw cap things (I don’t know what they’re called) and it was extremely difficult. I needed to take out 6 total and I could only get out 3. I spent 5 minutes trying to get out the fourth one to no avail. At that point I was very frustrated and wasn’t sure what to do. So I took some calming breaths because I was not feeling calm, and my brain thought, “Why don’t you look at the instructions?” So I looked at the instructions. And realized I had done it correctly. I hadn’t made a mistake…

So then I started crying out of frustration and joy, put back the 3 pieces I had taken out, and finished the desk. Fast forward another hour or so and both my desks and computers are set up. So now my daily work commute will go from walking 10 feet to something more like walking 50 feet. I’m not sure I can handle those extra 40 feet every morning and evening but I’ll have to try. 😉

In the evening I met up with some of my meetup friends at a park downtown and we discussed a couple of comic volumes we had read. It was nice being out there with them and while I’m not loving that there are fires surrounding me, the smoke from the fires did allow me to look directly at the sun as it set and that was beautiful. Now I’m home, eating a late dinner, sitting in my new computer chair, typing on my new desk, and finally winding down my day. Funny YouTube videos, perhaps? My day has been good, and I’m pleased with all I got done, but I am kind of tired. I will sleep well tonight. Hope you all do the same. 🙂