Adventure #26: An Absence of 'Happy,' An Abundance of Anticipation

Adventure Day is a Thursday again.  A day of extreme waiting, anticipation, excitement.  In reviewing the pics, not a lot of smiles though.  However, at this point, I'm more than giddy with excitement, since the writing of this entry is occuring only hours before I'm to pick Fish up from the airport.  He's in the air right now.  Flying to see ME all the way from Michigan!  AND it's Friday!  AND I don't have any responsibilities (Americorps-related) until TUESDAY!  (Whoa--the exclamation marks and caps kind of took over for a minute.)  But yeah, to the left is my disgruntled wake-up state of my room:  a mess of a bed and a laundry basked of clothes to take care of (freshly laundered the night before).  And for the record, the left-most laundry basket has a permanent state of existence at the foot of my bed.  Tis the 'jackets/coats storage space.'  Don't judge.

Wow did I have a lot of stuff to carry into work yesterday!  Yup, I managed to haul ALL of that to the apartment from the day before (campus visit day was Wednesday, and I drove, which means I got the STUFF).  It was...an interesting transport process, haha.

 

The immediate plan for my morning was to eat breakfast.  I was hungrier than usual (I played the 'am I hungry right before bed?' game the night before and opted for 'not.')  So breakfast was prepped, and right as I sat down to begin nomming the foods--my phone!  It rang, and I knew exactly who it would be!  See, Fish had promised a call because I had a very important (and very expected) question to ask him.  We had been counting down to him arriving in Austin by counting how many 'sleeps' remained until he'd be here.  And with that call I shortly got around to ask him:  "Fish, how many more sleeps?"  The answer?  "One."  Actually, he refused to answer it that way at first.  He phrased it:  "Let's just say that I'll be there tomorrow."  Phrasing is everything.  And I was VERY pleased with the way that sounded on my bright and early Thursday!

BUT...it was off to being productive for me, since I had until 10:20 to do stuff before I had to depart with my carpool to the CoFo office.  Next order of business:  Get dressed! 

When uploading the pics for today's blog post, I realized how sad I look in a lot of my pictures.  It's either that I was especially wanting my Fish to be here finally...or I was frustrated with trying to get an 'ok' picture and merely wasn't thinking about smiling.  (A better camera in my future would be AWESOME!  Earlier in the week I actually was Facebook chatting one of my collegians who is in a photography class, and she was giving me all kinds of pointers in buying a new camera--exciting stuff!)

 

So are ya curious what kept me so busy prior to work?  Prepping for Fish's arrival, of course!  I wanted minimal laundry to deal with while he's here, so I had washed/dried the night before--and that means folding for the morning!  The mass of clothes to the left had covered my dressers by the time I was done.  Pretty impressive (or at least I thought so). 

And then it was 'hurry-rush-around-like-a-crazy-person' time because I get so caught up in what I'm doing that I underestimate the amount of time I need to actually be ready to get out the door.  I had painted my nails RIGHT before leaving, too, so this added a bit of pressure to the departure activities.

But hey--look--I made it!  That's my feet enclosed safe and sound by the infamous Adventure shoes.  It was an interesting excursion getting myself down three flights of windimg stairs to actually get myself IN Luigi's car, but I managed (go me!).  I actually had to throw stuff in his trunk!  (...struggle...)  Ah well, we can just say that I was feeling pretty relieved by the time I actually wedged myself into the backseat.  It was go time!

Remember when I said that I frantically painted my nails?  Well it was true and above is the proof.  During the beginning part of the car ride I spent my time trying to get a picture of the crappy job I did on my nails.  And then I realized that my camera sucks, so you can't even see the details of the paint.  Then I changed my goal and tried to get a pic of my nails looking good.  (Haha, must be one or the other.)

 

So one thing among all of that STUFF that I had to bring to work was leftover muffins that I had baked from the campus visit the day before.  I decided that I would be generous and share them with the office friends (first come, first serve of course!).  My method was to pretty much just hand them out as I saw people pass by me or give them away if people asked.  The last two muffins (they were all pumpkin chocolate chip by the way) were sitting next to me on a shelf by my desk for actually quite a long time!  No worries though, by the end of the day I got hungry enough to eat one, and Matt was treated to the final one.

But you know what was SO AWESOME about returning to my desk after having been gone for a day?  I had MAIL sitting there waiting for me!  Yup, two Completion Agreements (contracts for collegians to sign stating that they agree to be in the College Forward program) and some YWCA brochures that I had requested the week prior.  Mail is awesome always, and it just goes to show that 'a watch pot doesn't boil.'  (I had been waiting for these Completion Agreements for awhile!)

With my day trucking along, I found myself extra-busy with playing catch-up to complete student contacts from the day prior, following up with students, and contacting students.  What kept me going?  The playlist that Fish had mailed me a few weeks earlier.  I usually keep it at work, and today was one of the days where I allowed myself to listen to the cd in its entirety.  (Oh hey--do you like my background?  I miss my pup Duncan soooo much!)

 

So here's a little office story for you:  me bringing PUMPKIN chocolate chip muffins meant that fellow Completion Coach Trevor HAD to have one.  (He had previously claimed that he hates all things pumpkin.  I had accepted the challenge to change that.)  The problem:  he wasn't at work!  For the whole work day!  I found out that he had his own campus visit that day at Concordia University, so I simply put his muffin on his desk.  The next problem:  Matt and Chee-Ia were eyeing his muffin!  Eventually, Matt came clean and delivered me the poor muffin, saving it from their ogling eyes and salivating mouths.  I gladly took little muffin and put him in a cleaned-out container from the CoFo kitchen to keep him safe (and fresh!) until Trevor could eat it.  (See my cute note above, too!)  The final problem:  I won't be there to witness Trevor trying the muffin!  I must know that this happened and that hungry little gremlins (ahem...Chee-Ia/Matt...) hadn't been allowed to eat it!  We'll see, I guess...although I did get a victory with Brooks eating a muffin and actually enjoying it!  (He was another one on the 'I-Hate-Pumpkin' train.  What a sad, sad train to be on.)

 

The above is a random piece of paper that I decided I would share.  Haha, just kidding, I saw some significance in it, so THAT'S why I decided to share (duh).  The YWCA brochures mailed to me were accompanied by a letter.  (Yup, I finally got around to opening the mail at some point.)  What appeared to be a simple form letter at first turned out to be a personalized letter from the woman who I'm guessing I had spoken with over the phone the week before.  Hopefully you can read the words ending the letter clearly enough.  Nothing groundbreaking, but I totally appreciate little things like that--brightened my day, and I decided I'd save it and tape it to the side of the cube shelves next to my desk.  A good little bit of motivation to read every now and then.

 

It had been a long day of work (however brief I may have made it seem).  A long day, yes, but it still went by pretty quickly, and I was kept busy throughout the whole day--just the way I like it.  I did have an unfortunate ending to the work day because nothing seemed to be going right:  I deleted student files that I had to go back and re-download, I had to re-start my computer because it was giving me attitude, I knocked over my water bottle and it got dangerously close to spilling all over my computer, AND I retrieved filing cabinet keys in mangers' office to then unlock cabinet in back room to then discover student doesn't have a file to then go to copy room to make a file to then put file in back room in filing cabinet to then realize that keys aren't in my pocket...and I had to then go back to retrace my steps (all the way back to the copy room) to then find them on the work table to then go back to the back room to lock the filing cabinet and return those keys to the managers' office.  Whew!  Longest.  Sentence.  Ever.  (Followed by four of the shortest sentences ever.  Because I can do that in my blog.)



 

 

Blurry picture?!  Yes and no.  Kind of purposefully blurry.  It was taken from the backseat of Luigi's car (I seem to occupy myself during carpool-time by taking pictures.  I'm so weird.)  I was especially intrigued by the sky and how dark it was already at only 7:15PM.  If you look carefully in the above pic, you can see that we are about entering the bridge that we drove over on the way home every day.  It's just a little bridge, but it can be tricky going from the left lane to the right lane on such a narrow, busy bridge.  (Our next turn is to the right, and it's immediately after we get off the bridge.  No worries, I've learned how to maneuver the bridge when I drive the carpool buddies home.)

 

Hey look--it's that darkening sky again!  A sunset in the distance.  And I swear that off camera it looked even darker and more contrastive.  Just take my word for it.

Did I mention that I was EXCITED at the end of this work day?  Don't get me wrong, I love working at CoFo (...or is it volunteering?...  Eh, whatever!).  It's just that four days IN A ROW off work is something to look forward to!  It had been awhile since we've had a work vacation/break, and I was ready to face my four-day weekend head on!  (Pretty sure I heard some jealousy in others' voices as I said my good-byes, though.  Oh well, we're all guaranteed ten days off throughout our term of service--and two of mine had arrived!)  Part of my excitement was my determination to keep myself busy until 11AM the next morning when I get to pick up Fish.  Part of that plan was to go to yoga at 8:30 that night...which didn't really go as planned.  There was a special event at a partnering yoga studio, but I'd never been there before...and my GPS doesn't do any kind of updates, so it couldn't locate the studio.  Turns out the class was super-full, so my friend/co-worker Stephanie just met me at our usual studio, and we went to the 8:45PM 'sweaty candlit yoga' class.  My thoughts:  the instructor was too drill-seargent-y.  (That is now a word by the way.  Anything can become a word if you hyphenate it.)  It was the most intense yoga class of my life (the sweating really plays a key role) and possibly one of the most intense workouts I've ever done.  I definitely prefer the more calming flow style that I'd been going to on Saturday afternoons during other weeks, but I guess it was nice to do something really active after a day of sitting at my desk for eight hours.   I just really really REALLY needed to shower after class AND clean my yoga mats really well.  (I use two for the extra padding.)  Oh, and if you don't know how to clean a yoga mat, you should ask me some time.  I wouldn't want you to ruin yours...or be stuck with a stinky mat!

 

The pic to the left is super out of order (I kinda rambled after posting the previous pic and got ahead of myself and am too lazy to mess with layout and move it).  I just thought it would be a good idea to capture the second half of my dinner, which was eaten furiously in my rush to get to yoga on time.  Since buying food for myself, I hadn't had any veggie burgers, but with the rush of dinner, I only had time to microwave one quick (with some yummy bbq sauce on the side).  Pretty sure my steamed broccoli took up the majority of my dinner time, but whatever, it was tasty.

So yeah, yoga was tiring, and I got showered/ready to relax pretty quickly after returning home.  But I was HUNGRY again already!  My usual nightly apple/tea combo was eaten AND I had a treat!  Ever had refrigerated oatmeal?  It's so good!  You prep it hours before, let it sit in the fridge, then give it a stir/shake and enjoy!  The sitting-in-the-fridge process soaks the oats until they are soft and yummy.  And the best way to make it is as I do--by stirring everything up in an empty-but-not-clean peanut butter or Nutella jar.  That night it was Nutella.  Unfortunately I had done quite a job of eating every bit of Nutella before making the oatmeal concoction, so there wasn't much Nutella flavoring left for the oatmeal.  Ah well, that's what the brown sugar/chocolate chips/Greek yogurt/milk is for!

I kind of felt bad because everything after work took sooo long, and I had every intent of Skyping Fish ONE LAST TIME before he'd be here!  I did get to Skype him for awhile, but he'd been waiting around for me, I think, and he had to wake up at four or five in the morning to leave for his flight.  It was a good Skype chat though and got me excited to finally see his face in person after not having seen him since JULY!  (That realization--the length of time we'd gone without seeing each other--fully hit me yesterday.  I guess it's a good thing it hit me so soon to him coming here because it made me really miss him more.)  But that was my Adventure Day.  I really wasn't all that tired, believe it or not, after Fish got off Skype and headed to bed.  I did a few things around my room as far as tidying up a bit, but managed to get in bed and fall asleep at some point.  Week 26 has come and gone...and soon to be an exciting Week 27 to be shared with all.  Happy Weekend, dear readers!