Weekend Wrap Up

Technically, we haven’t even reached the half way point of the weekend but I won’t be writing anything tomorrow so you get what you get. Plus, I haven’t put anything out there for a couple of days so there are some things to catch up on.

My lesson on Thursday was kind of a disaster. We were going over the Waltz and there is a step at the end (ladies inside turn check and pass) and neither one of us could remember how to get into it. JoNY even checked the video but they got into the step in a different way so it was no help at all. I did eventually remember something that felt right to me but JoNY thought her feet were all wrong.

So we dropped the Waltz and just went through the Fox Trot, Tango and Viennese Waltz. Those went better although I wasn’t really in a good head space so I was starting to pick at the details. OwnerGuy showed up with a couple of minutes left but he had no idea what we were doing and suggested changing it up a bit. In the end, JoNY decided to go with what he had and hope for the best.

It isn’t like teachers are supposed to be perfect and mistakes happen. Still, you kind of hope that your teacher remembers your patterns when we are just a week from Showcase. Let’s just say it didn’t do much for my overall anxiety. I signed up for a couple of extra lessons next week although I know that you reach a point where adding extra lessons right before an event can become counter productive. I figured we needed some time to make up for the week we lost when she was down with the flu.

Had a few trick or treaters show up. It was cold (more about that later). I was telling the kids to take a few because I didn’t want to be stuck with a bunch of candy. The last couple of kids were kind of greedy in my opinion. One was picking through to grab all the remaining Snickers. They were near the end of the allotted time so I wasn’t worried about running out but, still, it seemed a bit excessive.

It freaking snowed here on Halloween! WTF! I mean it only amounted to a trace and only stuck to certain places like the leaves on my deck. Come on winter, couldn’t you have just waited a day or two. That’s another reason why I was giving out more than one piece. If the kids toughed it out in the cold, then they deserved a reward for doing that.

Then we got plunged into an early winter/late fall deep freeze and it isn’t really even early winter or late fall. Kind of killed off the vast majority of the remaining annuals. There are a few sad ones left trying to add color. Oh and it blew down a heck of a lot of leaves. It is starting to feel like both spring and fall are compressed and we are headed towards six months of winter (Nov through April) and six months of summer (May through October).

I did get all the clothing I ordered for Showcase. There was just one problem. I get the notification from Amazon saying things were delivered but there was nothing on my front porch. According to Amazon, you need to wait 36 hours before doing anything because sometimes it takes that long for something to actually be delivered even when it says it was actually delivered.

On Friday, I called UPS because they were the ones Amazon used to deliver and after they found out it was an Amazon order, the lady on the phone told me that it wasn’t their problem. Like they have a special deal with Amazon so anything coming from Amazon needs to be investigated by Amazon. Of course the Amazon web site said to contact the shipper. Nobody wants to take responsibility.

It turns out that they were delivered to my neighbors house because she brought them over later in the day. This the second time something has been diverted to the wrong house. Our driveways are close together but the mailboxes are clearly numbered so I have no idea what the UPS driver was doing. E-commerce is great until some driver can’t find your house.

Heard from someone at my old workplace. I have mentioned this before but my department was all about the dressing up on Halloween. Most of the rest of the building is a bunch of tight-a**es who don’t like to have fun. Or they are just afraid to dress up because of what it might say about them as employees. Or something else but, according to her, it was super boring at work without us there.

One of my old team members seems to think that we were targeted because we were the one department that kind of went all in at Halloween. I know that this isn’t true but I can see her point. If it played any part, then it really just speaks to how sad our leadership is. I kind of feel that an R&D department should have some characters. If you want creativity, then don’t you want people to relax and have a little fun because it stimulates creative thinking. Do you really want a bunch of buttoned up rule followers in R&D? Maybe they do. If so, it is kind of why the department is headed down.

So I guess we are supposed to turn our clocks back an hour. Daylight savings time is one of those things people love to complain about but most of the complaints are just boring and stupid. For the next couple of months we’ve got between 9 and 10 hours of sunlight. That’s just not a lot of time to work with and there isn’t going to be a perfect solution. It is either going to be dark until late in the morning or it will get dark early in the afternoon. Pick your poison. If you could deal with things in less than one hour increments, you might be able to better split things up but that would just be way to confusing.

People who work until five don’t want to be driving home in the dark because it is depressing. If it stays dark too late in the morning, everyone worries about kids and going to school. (Nobody ever suggests starting the school day later and I’m not entirely sure why) But the arguments are really just about people’s personal preference for when they want light which is why it gets kind of hard to listen to people whining about one option or the other.

Its probably just a winter thing. Cold and dark just makes people cranky.

I do know that for the first time since I was retired, I’ve started to feel a little restless. I had some things to do to keep me occupied but I’ve mostly wrapped them up and now I’m looking for other things. Not sure what they will be.

I was still reading but the latest book I’ve got has been a huge disappointment. Went back to the YA/fantasy realm for this. Again, if you don’t already know this, we INFP’s never really get all the way out of childhood. I always like to day dream about what life would be like in these worlds I read about.

And there are dark parts to most of these stories. That’s not a bad thing because I like the whole concept of the underdog taking on and beating a big bad. Especially like the idea of a rag tag group taking on a more powerful force and coming out on top. But if you make the circumstances too dark, it starts to lose me because who wants to be depressed when you are reading for pleasure. That was one problem with this book.

I’ve also said before that I like less than perfect characters. Give me people with scars and damage who rise above to achieve great things. That stuff just speaks to me. Again, though, it is too easy to overdue it and then you end up with an unlikable main character. Either way too weak or way too single minded. In the first case, they can’t do anything. In the second, they keep making a bunch of stupid mistakes getting everyone into even more trouble.

This book had those issues. Plus, I got to a point where there was some pigheaded kid who hid to go on a mission where he got captured by the enemy and now everyone is all up in arms over that. This is probably the heartless part of me. If it had been a dog, it would have been different. But this kid did something stupid and now I’m supposed to be all upset that he’s been captured. And I don’t need to read the other characters accusing each other and getting all bent out of shape over this.

I was seriously close to just giving up but I did what I rarely do which was to go to the end and see what happens. I know. Major spoilers! I wasn’t really invested in any of these characters and I mostly just wanted to know if this book wrapped up here or if the author was going to try and squeeze a part three out of it. It does look like it wraps up here and the endings seem mostly happy. None of the main characters die and the bad guys are defeated. You might think that ruins the story but since I know it turns out OK, I’m fine with it looking hopeless right now.

Well that’s a wrap for today.