“Remoted” – Workday 51 / Day 66 (Thursday)

The weather has been nice for several consecutive days. The heat is off and the windows have been open during the day. Except for the pollen and the itchy eyes and Mother Nature’s semi-annual attempt to kill me, it’s been great!

This afternoon during our team video meeting, a couple people attended from their decks overlooking beautiful yards. There was some outdoor envy, partly because the BungaLowell deck abuts the neighbor’s asphalt driveway. After the meeting, I decided to try working from the deck to sit in the sun.

There is an outlet on the corner of the house, so power needs are covered. I gingerly transported the laptop with the cracked screen (that also has the better graphics and the remote connection to work), to the table on the deck. The wireless keyboard and mouse, which, now that I have them, I can’t work without them, came along. The phone, with its increasingly annoying issues including turning itself off any time an app is opened, was in my pocket. There was a glass of water. And the dogs, of course. My two little shadows. All this stuff was carried to the table on the deck, where I immediately discovered it was too bright to see the computer screen. At each of the four chairs at the table it was the same story. Opening the umbrella might have helped, but the objective was not to sit outside in the shade, there is plenty of that inside the house. Conceding defeat, it was all schlepped back into the house and the desk.

Kale, farro, and squash salad
with an Australian white. Yum!

At half past five o’wine o’clock, a trek to the outdoors was attempted again, armed this time with a glass of wine and a bowl of kale, farro, and roasted squash salad. By then, the table at the end of the deck was in complete shade. Shady dinner was still nice, except for the crappy soundtrack of Moose barking through most of it. When the dining was done, a chair was moved a few feet further down the deck into the shifting sun to read a book (still The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto). Barely a page in, Moose was barking again, so he was put in the house, which paid off with roughly five minutes and a few pages of peace before the concert resumed. (It’s hard to know for sure, as the phone/timekeeping device had died for the 57th time.) Even with total sun time of barely ten minutes, there was a fresh crop of freckles, because that’s how I roll in the sun. Much more time outside and I would likely have burned. 

Produce day!

Today has a nice highlights reel. The weather was beautiful, and even when indoors it’s still a mood lift. It was Friday-eve, which is always a mood elevator. It’s the kickoff to a four day weekend, which has been classified as a mini-vacation here at the BungaLowell. The produce delivery arrived with the kale for the supper salad, which was an attempt to replicate a food memory. Last fall, I had a similar salad at a restaurant in the JW Marriott in Austin, Texas. It was close, but the mustard on hand lacked the full punch of Dijon, so that flavor didn’t come through as well as it was remembered. It was still two bowls good, though. There were also some of the most tasty potato chips to ever dance across my tongue. Deep River Snacks Sweet Maui Onion? Oh, yes please. And a lovely Australian white from the wine delivery of several weeks ago. The living feels large and easy here tonight, and that feels good.