Not A Bad Weekend, Really

Song: “Combine Harvester” by The Wurzels

Mood: 6.5

Nightmares: 0

This weekend went pretty well. It started out cold and rainy and windy but ended up sunny and calm.

One negative thing, though – I’m not getting enough sleep and it’s catching up with me. Part of it is that I’m waking up and worrying during the night, part of it is that I have trouble getting back to sleep in the morning once I wake up, and part of it is that I’m not going to bed early enough. I’ve been starting to write my posts at about the same time every night, but the posts are considerably longer now than they used to be. So… I’m going to change my schedule around a bit and try to write up my posts (or at least get a good start on them) before J and I go downstairs to watch our evening show.

My exercises went reasonably well this weekend. Better yesterday than today, but still not too bad. I’m still doing my little prep routine and listening to those nature sounds and that still seems to be doing good things for me. Because I’ve been tired, I’m losing chunks of the time, though. I don’t know if I’m falling asleep or my brain is just wandering somewhere I’m not actively telling it to go.

J has her midterm exam tomorrow afternoon, so she spent most of the weekend studying. I tried to be as quiet as possible as I went around the house and did my stuff.

I texted with DA some more today and, if all goes well, he should be getting home with his mom and the giant truck some time this evening. I’ll be glad when he’s done with the truck and returns it – some of the rental companies around here don’t have a very good reputation for maintaining their vehicles and he put a lot of miles on that thing. It sounds like he’s tried to make the trip as enjoyable as possible though, by stopping at unique and interesting places for meals. Some of them were restaurants that also were breweries, while others were very old buildings that had either been preserved or, in some cases, converted into a restaurant or pub. Some of the pictures he sent were pretty impressive!

I didn’t get out for a walk this weekend. Yesterday was rainy, but I don’t have any excuse for today. I’m still planning to go into the grocery store early this coming week, instead of just pacing around the parking lot. I’d like to actually buy something, too. That would be pretty great.

I tried Fortnite again a couple of times this weekend. I figured out how to fly after jumping out of the Battle Bus, and I can now build stuff. In a couple of rounds, I was even able to find some weapons that were way better than my axe. I even managed to kill an opponent once, but what happens most of the time is I spend 97% of my time sneaking around buildings and collecting equipment, 2% of my time scampering from building to building, and 1% of my time getting shot in the face with a rocket.

Dr C told me a long time ago that I needed to force myself to sit down and do things I used to enjoy, like hobbies. I must admit, I had to force myself to unpack the microscope a couple of times but now that I have, it’s been very interesting. Today, I fished some algae out of the fish tank in the living room and took a look. There seems to be at least two different kinds of algae growing, with one being much larger (and cooler to look at) than the other:

I also got a picture of what I think are some diatoms sitting amongst the algae:

One of the things I need to work on is preparing the specimens before I put them under the lens. There’s too much extra stuff – junk, things tangled in or stacked over/under what I’m trying to look at, air bubbles… all kinds of stuff. I was pretty decent at preparing things when I was doing bio labs at the university, but that was a while ago and I think I need to spend some time practising slide preparation.

Tomorrow should be a quiet day, and that’s a good thing. I hope it’s not raining in the morning so I can get out to the strip mall and try to do cool things like buy some Tic Tacs. I have appointments scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, so those days will likely be difficult and exhausting. I also need to look into fixing the couch – the control that reclines one side has broken.

But to start, I’m going to bed earlier this evening.

Stay safe.