So. I have to use up vacation days by the end of the month or else start losing them. So I am taking a 5.5 long week starting this afternoon and ending Tuesday, and then a 4-day weekend the next weekend. Yes, it's a little weird scheduling (I have meetings on Tuesdays) and yes, I should be like, going somewhere, except I have weekend plans.

I went into work for half the day and dear lord, it was crazy. See, I mentioned in this entry that we were planning another weekend of shopping. There's a gem faire, there's a quilting/sewing/craft faire, and there's a book fair. One of them runs only on Sunday, one runs Saturday and Sunday, and the third is Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Well, I found out in the last couple of days that the only day all three of us were free on was Saturday. So much for any "hey, how's about we take 2 days to go to these things" plans. There has been much debate and negotiation going on over e-mail and phone as to if there was any way to do this other than "cram it all in on one day." Nope, there really isn't. Gaaaah.

Added complication: L's car, which we were going to take, is not working at the moment, and she's not sure when it will be, if it just needs a jump or what. So could I rent a Zipcar, at least as a backup? Okay, sure-- gonna cost me $70+ for the day, but oh well. At least I could reserve it before other people did if I did it today. And I printed out EVERY EFFING POSSIBLE PERMUTATION of how to get to all those places in various orders from Mapquest.

Possible saving problem: I got to see Dawn (from this entry) today and she may want to come along, and volunteered her car if she does. If she can get out of what she's supposed to be doing Sunday, that is. I hope so, because it's also supposed to be pouring ass rain again and uh...I'd rather not drive in it if I don't have to.

I don't know about you, but dear god, I'm confused as to what is going on these days. SO CONFUSED.

So anyway, taking a half day was good because I spent a lot of it uh, busy. I also heard from Elsa today (e-mailed her in December!), so that was nice.

After I got out, I did something that's a novelty to me: going to the gym on a weekday at noon to work out. I took a zumba class from a new instructor. It was actually pretty odd. While the new girl knew the steps and all, she was the least musical dancer I've ever seen. Kind of approximate and stilted most of the time. I usually think the instructor is always the one who looks the best at doing the moves, probably because s/he's the one who made them up. This time I actually had more flow and rhythm than she did. Strangeness.

Having gotten my gym time for the day conveniently over with, I ended up wandering around the arboretum for awhile and hanging out in this huge gazebo on the far end of campus. One of those things I always kind of wanted to do, but couldn't because it's really far out. I sat around and read a little, and uh, continued to spend time on the phone trying to schedule out the weekend. Guh.

After finally getting ahold of Monica after she got out of a final and talking this stuff out, we agreed to meet for an early dinner at 4 at a new Chinese restaurant. The service was...very new, I will say. The menu was amusing because they continually misspelled "noodle" as "noddle." (Note that the name of the restaurant has the word "noodle" in it...) The food was all right, the egg rolls were the best part. We shot the shit for awhile, talked about the weekend. She wants to start a knitting circle on Sunday. Then we hung around campus for awhile, saw Dawn, and eventually she went to her final and I went home.

It wasn't how I'd planned to spend the day, but it was nice anyway. Too bad this is literally the one nice, non-chilly, non-rainy day happening at the end of this month, apparently. I wanted the time off to primarily go outside in the afternoons without having to be at work all day, but...I guess today's brief moments of basking in the sunshine will have to do.

I really like having more flexibility in the daytime to do stuff. I wish that was something I could do and still make money....

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