The Marci Rating System

*Leftover pad thai for lunch today, yum!

*It was cool enough last night to open the windows and not regret my life choices by morning!

*I finished a battleship fic yesterday, so today I get the fun of cooking up ideas again!

*Cats! I love them!

*Sometimes when I walk around town I see other peoples' cats, which is great too! (Sometimes I pick a route specifically to try to see cats!)

*Exclamation points! (!!!)

*COFFEE

When I remembered that tomorrow is Monday and I'll be going back to work, my Whole Entire Brain went 'noooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' So, you know, pretty much as usual.

But there are so many good things to look forward to today!

*I ordered some clothes when the Labor Day sales were in full swing and they arrived yesterday afternoon, so today I get to try on my two new sweatshirts, yay! (Mm, fall is the cozy season!)

*Today is the community pot-luck day here, which I am not at all sure will be fun (haha talking with people, not in my top ten list of ways to spend time!). BUT I am looking forward to having it over and done with, and to no longer having our pot-luck food offering taking up space in the house. And it's neat that the community has something like that, even if it's not totally my jam.

*AND we are talking about maybe moving furniture around in the front room, and I love moving furniture around! (I'm planning to rearrange my bedroom again in October, so that I'm not blocking the heaters, and I've already had to talk myself out of doing it early more than once.)

Sometimes I want to write fanfic for NaNoWriMo and the source material is just... not cooperating with what I want the backstory / world building / canon events to be. (Hahaha what are timelines???) As a reminder for myself, here are my top six strategies for getting around those sticky subjects.

1. Ignore canon and pretend it didn't happen. (A classic!)

2. They were lying. (So, if someone says a thing can only happen after, just a random example, 100,000 years, and that would just be Super Inconvenient for the story, maybe they're lying. It happens!)

2a. The corollary: they were lying because they thought someone might be spying on them and they were trying to throw them off. A MYSTERY!

3. They were guessing / making it up. (Having done teaching, retail, and customer service, there is a LOT of stuff I've said that was 80% guessing, 20% hoping no one questioned it.)

4. The "it was all a dream" thing. Which is basically unreliable narrator, right? The POV character thinks they know what happened, but WHOOPS it turns out they were wrong. It was a dream, or a spell, or they were sick, or something. Maybe they don't even know what! How convenient!

5. The conventional wisdom that "everyone knows" is being manipulated by someone for some purpose. (Maybe just because it's funny! Or a misunderstanding! Not everything is a conspiracy. But sometimes it is!)

6. Whatever the canon equivalent of SGA's 'Ancient artifact' is. Inexplicable, impossible to predict, and extremely useful to finagle out of (or into) just about any situation.

*coffee (it's been a while since I posted about looking forward to coffee; I figured it was time!)

*maybe a short walk before it gets hotter?

*eggs for brunch

*a picnic!

*a shower

*a quiet evening

*knowing that tomorrow it will be much cooler

Starting a fresh year, one day post-birthday! Some things I learned this week:

*Salt has an expiration date.

*There is a limit to how many free mugs the other apartment complex residents are willing to take off my hands.

*The fig grapefruit GoodLight candle is great.

*Two things I consistently purchase and then don't use: aromatherapy roll-ons and room sprays.

*If I put all the rarely-used kitchen items in boxes, and throw out all the expired stuff, I actually only need about a third of my cupboards.

1. Wrapping some presents!

2. Making some dumplings!

3. Listening to some music!

4. Drinking some coffee!

5. Reading some fic!

6. Doing some walking!

Things that were not helpful today:

*extra trails existing in physical space but not on the map.

Things that were very helpful today:

*interactive map app that showed us on the trail (::cough:: or not ::cough::) in real time. Definitely wound up on the wrong side of the river at one point and only realized after checking the app.

*a rope — alas, the rope did not indicate the HARDEST part of the trail, simply the only part a rope could help with. Still, it did help!

*scone from breakfast — I ate the scone after we finally made it past the ‘why are there so many extra trails I wanted this to be easy’ part of the hike, and it was delicious.

In conclusion:

*snacks yes, getting lost no

Swimming and hiking is more tiring than just hiking (haha what a surprise!). It’s been a while since I last swam; much longer since I last swam in a lake. A delightful addition to the trip!

There were purple potatoes at dinner last night! So pretty and also delicious.

I’ve given up on putting punctuation at the start of each section, because I’m on my phone and it feels like A Lot to go find the asterisk each time.

I felt silly bringing extra lip balm along, but yesterday when I temporarily lost the one that had been in my pocket, it sure was nice to have a backup! (There’s certain things that stress me out when I don’t have them, and lip balm is one of them, and a some point I just gave up on convincing myself that was silly and now I just carry it everywhere.)

Packing up is easier when you just have to carry things a five minute walk to the car, and can use as many bags as you want. Still not easy, but easier!

Six good things from this week.

1. The Rainbow Connection video. (aka "10 days, 50+ friends, and a lot of free time to make some magic!")

2. Also in music, my phone popped up 'Seasons of Love' from Rent in shuffle play yesterday, and I was like, 'YES PLEASE.' It was great.

3. On a training call for work this week, the presenter used the phrase "work pajamas." (As in, "I'm not sharing my video, because I'm in my work pajamas.")

4. Everything Bagel Seasoning. It's delicious. Makes every reheated meal taste better than ever.

5. Found my sewing machine; figured out how to thread the needle AND do the thing with the bobbin. A miracle.

6. Heard the spring peepers last night for the first time this season! <3 <3 <3

1. Pictures & posts from family! <3 <3 <3

2. So many WIP updates from amazing authors this week!

3. Ten Percent Happier is doing a five minute meditation every weekday at 3pm (US Eastern time). (Sometimes there's a cat!)

4. Today's forecast: sunny.

5. The Killers debuted 'Caution' live in Brandon Flowers' bathroom -- and appeared to be having an absolutely fantastic time doing so.

6. My new coworker!