Thrihyrne

Had a long but very meaningful and social day yesterday. There was intense work (as in, Airbnb work), and going on a currently secret afternoon excursion that involved cleaning and tidying, laundry, and spending much-appreciated time with evannichols's mother, Gwen, and then coming home and then going to a scumptiously social cookout at sanguinity and grrlpup's house and seeing the Maki family as well. Sang is an accomplished griller, and H. made amazing potato salad (I still need to get that recipe!) and meeting Nicole's young men in person was a delightful experience that I'll admit I didn't expect to feel to that level. I'm not much into other people's offspring in general (even my own siblings' children), and I haven't been around teenagers in… years?? Anyway, they were articulate, not-posing, independent souls and their genuine affection for each other and their parents was actually mind-blowing the more I think about it. Yay for a family unit that's healthy and respects everyone's individuality, and is effusive in affection.

As the years have gone on, I've recognized within myself (and also Sang has pointed out to me) that I don't really care about the pyrotechnics of fireworks and the sparkler bomb. It's true. I get nothing out of it. So this year, I enjoyed the food and companionship and conversation and social part of the evening and then came home to get in a run that I'd intended to have first thing Friday morning— except that I'd neglected to turn on my morning alarm at all so I overslept my ability to run before work. Oooops. I had a great run and then futzed around the internet looking at fun purple/wild orchid/lavender/magenta hair colors until it was time to go pick Evan back from the night's festivities. I was treated to bonus social time as everyone was still there! There was also ginger and caramel ice cream. NOMNOMNOM. And a second round of hugs, which was really wonderful to top it all off.

Today?
BLISS ON A STICK. A DAY AT HOME WITH EVAN DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IF I DON'T WISH IT.
Even Mod Physique was cancelled so Jessa could have a holiday weekend, so I truly have nothing on my calendar. There are only a few things I plan to accomplish:
~ giving emansil_12 a call
~ finishing my Reggie/Kelp story (only 1.5 scenes to go! then Grand Editing will commence)
~ doing a half hour or so of my favorite Mod Physique toning moves but no cardio today

and the usual of enjoying Evan's company and playing a helluva lot of Facebook games. :D

I'm very glad to have returned pretty much in the condition that I departed. This means that my flights were gratefully uneventful and my luggage made it with me and I'm back to my love and my home and my primarily quiet life. :)

As this is a public space I won't say too much about HQ except that having a huge open space may be a good way to promote creativity, but it's AWFUL for trying to do any kind of customer-facing work. It's loud and hard to concentrate and impossible to make outbound phone calls. It simply makes no sense for customer support and I'm very, very glad to be back in my home 'office.' On the other side, it was tremendous and heart-warming and illuminating and disarming to meet so many of my fellow remote employees in one place. I re-bonded with my roommate who I got to know during our pop-up office time last year, and spent a fair bit of time with a few select others. I will say that for someone like me, being fed breakfast, lunch and dinner at HQ for several days was really great. Nobody appears in my kitchen and cooks for me when I'm here during my shifts! ;)

Here's a link to a photo of me in proximity to the Golden Gate Bridge:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/88838401@N03/8997005617/

I'm hoping some other group shots and dinner photos will get handed around, but who knows. In having a much-needed 1:1 with my team lead in person, I found out that they actually need somebody to do something that greatly interests me, which is database management and being able to retrieve and make sense of data in a meaningful way for our team. My eyes and face must have lit up when we were discussing it, and now I'm going to be teaching myself SQL. evannichols has said he'll give me an overview as well. :D

In very exciting news, I'm writing again! Not on the Aldarion Numenorean story, but on a HP Charlie-centric fic. evannichols and I tried out setting aside an hour yesterday evening to work on our respective creative pursuits (non-knitting, in my case) and it was great. I'm really happy to be writing rather free-form with this story and seeing where it goes.

Did I mention how happy I am to be back home? In Portland? In bed, with Evan at my side? ♥