Weekends and oddities.

I was supposed to go to a party at Scott's friends' house last night. I'd forgotten, or gotten confused; I thought it was next weekend. I also have the after-hours cell phone this weekend - so I couldn't go - it would have been 40 minutes from work (and further from home than that)...and that violates my response times. (Some people's commutes violate our response times, down in the Bay Area offices...but, we're supposed to try....)

I feel bad. I've never met these friends - a combination of timing, shyness, and a lack of interest in their games. I was almost looking forward to this one, not quite. But I'm also glad I didn't go - apparently it was a fairly large party, with people from their workplace, and alcohol. Some people got fairly drunk.

I had a good time last night, hanging out and playing Neopets. And Scott (before explaining the real reason for my absence) got to say to his friends, when asked where I was, "Oops! I knew I forgot something!"

I spent a good portion of this morning on neopets, shop-wizzing for stuff. I still don't understand why the site is addictive, but, I must concede at this point that it is. Augh!

I've altered my email filters to play sounds for some sub-categories. Chimes or cat-mews or birdsong announce emails from some people, or emails to my LiveJournal address, or comments in my LiveJournal.

Of course, I'm signed up for email alerts when abuse issues come in. So I had to find a sound for that. The one I chose? A wav file of a yowling cat (like the sound you'd expect if someone stepped on its tail).

I'm strange. But I like me that way.

I feel useful. And cheerful.

I'm tracking what I'm doing, out of the things I mean to commit time to. I'm not doing that well yet (I only just started), but I'm doing better now that I'm tracking it. And part of that is that I looked at what I wasn't doing, or wasn't doing as much, and in a couple cases decided that I'd simply pushed myself to give more than I wanted to.

Silly Laura, overextending is bad.

But today? Today, I spent six hours on volunteer work I normally give maybe 2-3 hours a week. We had a lot of things that needed to get done, and will for a while, but I was actually enjoying it - there was so much to do, there still is, but it was good to get it done.

And I found time to write a bit more on a story-snippet I'm working on (I still have no clue where it's going, or whether it will have any value when done, other than having amused me along the way - but it is amusing me along the way). I had an ice cream sandwich for breakfast, just because I could. I played neopets. I chatted with a friend and got to enjoy hearing about her very cool new character.

I didn't get a scene I'd hoped for, but that's life. Apparently, the GM's net simply hates me. ;) Or her, perhaps.

And the laundry is getting done - it isn't all done yet, but there's a load in the washer and one in the dryer, and some already done.

The sunset outside my window right now is really pretty: blue at the horizon, with pink blush shading to peach and cream partway up the sky, the main bowl of the sky a ghost-pale blue untouched with clouds. The pasture is pale stone-yellow, with brushes of green and white and brown and darker yellow spattered across it where other plants grow, bounded close to me by the pale green of trees in light-shadow from our houses, and at the far side by the darker, richer evergreen tones of the trees there, interspersed with a dark brown that's almost black from the purple-leaved trees; they bleed all their color out in some fashion when the sun's touch leaves them.

I'm listening to Enya's "Wild Child" (on infinite repeat, a bad habit of mine when I really like a song), and I feel wonderful. Nothing's perfect; I could have asked more or less from this day in some areas; but some things are darned good.

And today was one of them.