For today's staycation, I used a "free day" at a new business in town where you can basically use a desk and a quiet room without having to spend hours drinking coffee at a cafe. They were offering a $5 trial for a half day between 9 and 5. Not bad. I told them I'd do it between 9 and 1 today.

However...the free day was because oh, btw, my old employer's doing a story and there's gonna be photos at 1!

Now, before I got this e-mail saying that last bit, I had already booked driving time for the second half of the afternoon, right after my 4 hours was up. So technically, yes, I was already busy and not gonna be around for picture time. But...well, I didn't want to get my picture taken by people I used to work with either. Too weird and too sad. But I know darned well that if I said as much, I'd just get argued with. I'm well aware of the arguments people use for getting stuff for articles, and "I don't wanna" generally brings on more pestering.

So my plan was to leave before all the people got there. Of course, that failed and I saw people on my way out and it was Awkward. Much to my sadness, the one guy there I dated after being laid off was there. (Which makes no sense given what his job is, but who knows any more) Then I felt even shittier.

As for the actual desk time, it was nice. I had a view at work for a change. I went through a bunch of papers and reading that I'd normally go through sitting around outside in the warm-- which was not so much going on today because of windy. So, it was pleasant enough. I already know there's no justifiable reason for me to sign up for this sort of thing on a regular basis since I could probably only use it on the occasional weekend, but I wanted to try it out. Something different, anyway.

Before I finish the rest of this, Dawn is totally on board with the trip on Saturday and driving everyone. Huzzah! I have canceled my all-freaking-day-long car reservation, so for this week's practice, I kept my previously set reservation.

After that, I did my car rental time. I drove to the booming metropolis of Woodland during weekday daylight hours to see the stores when they are actually open.

I also drove a new model of car. Most of the campus rentals are Ford Focuses or Toyota Priuses (and one SUV I avoid for reasons of not needing that big of a car), but there was one Honda Insight Hybrid I hadn't tried yet, and I figured I should acquaint myself with the model in case it's the only car available sometime. It took me about 40 minutes to figure out the car and get on the freeway...which is probably short for me, really. I read the manual so I know what buttons do what, I had to figure out how to get the windshield wipers off, I had to crank up the AC because despite it being winter weather here it was boiling hot in that car. And then I had to figure out how to fix the steering wheel so I could see the speedometer. But after all of that... the car was pretty easy to drive, no real issues with it. Huzzah.

Downtown Woodland has a few good stores. The clothing stores are nice. There's a cute knickknack shop. I was happy to discover that there's a used bookstore in town now, with a large amount of books. I restrained myself on the books though, given my weekend plans. The only thing I bought was a $3 velvet jacket at Goodwill.

But other than that, man, there's not a lot to do there. Every time I go there (obviously not often, and pretty much only when I have had jury duty before), another cool store went out of business. There's really not a lot to do if you're not hitting one of the big box stores or a craft store on the fringes of town. I still haven't found out if the knitting store still exists, but I suspect not. I realized the car was low on gas and had to drive it back to my town to find a gas station that I knew would accept Zipcards for gas payments.

The nice thing about that was that I got back early enough to get gas, make a run to my house to drop off all of my crap, and even hit Trader Joe's for another uh, linner meal before dropping off the car and going to the gym. It's really nice to be able to take the classes that start at 5:15, which I can't do on a workday any more when you need to be in line for a half hour beforehand.

While waiting around for class, I was reading this article on real life superheroes. You know, I'm aware of the legalities, possible injuries, cop hatred, etc. with regards to people who decide to DIY superhero. But I really like and admire those folks anyway. They're creating their own adventures and making their lives interesting. My biggest excitement today was being outside on a workday at 2:30 p.m.

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