random thoughts – Day 1,171 – (Thursday) – back to normal

It was back to the office today. There was a crunchy start when I accidentally did the morning activities out of order. Somehow, I neglected to make coffee, which is usually the first activity, followed by prepping Winston’s breakfast. Returning to the kitchen after dressing and seeing an empty coffee pot was confusing. Worse, later, I couldn’t remember if I had given Win his insulin.

At the office, 255 emails were lying in wait to greet me at log in. I took a deep breath and dove in. It could have been a lot worse, but the weekend and a holiday being part of the vacation probably helped. And a lot of those were subscriptions and newsletters that could be ignored and deleted.

Unfortunately, I missed a colleague’s going away party on Wednesday, which had pizza and cupcakes. Her last day is Friday and there is the opportunity to say a proper good bye/good luck. There was a piece of leftover veggie pizza and a couple cupcakes and I pounced on them like a hungry jackal. So yummy.

The garden at ALL.

Midday, I managed to extricate myself from the desk chair and get outside the building. There was a walk around the block, past the brick park on Middle Street, then the little gated park on Market Street. There was a quick visit to see the show at the Art League of Lowell (ALL) and then I picked up my photo that was in the recently ended Associate Artists’ show at The Brush Gallery. 

It was nice to get some air and I need to do it more often.  It was hot in the sun, but one side of several streets was shaded, and by not walking like I was in a time trial for the Senior Games race walk competition, it was comfortable.

Overall, it was a pretty good day. It exceeded the recently established acceptable baseline of “tolerable,” chosen for its attainability. Lowering the bar has really improved things.