Friday, April 20, 2018

7ToF: out of a job

1. About a month ago I told you my last day of work would be April 19th. Since I'm writing this the day before you'll see it, today is April 19th and I am DONE! I will miss it. I will miss the structure and the new friends and the feeling of accomplishment you get when you finish a project, and especially when you get paid for doing it. But having said that, I'm also really happy to be done. REALLY HAPPY. The door is open for me to possibly do some further work for them in the future, so they may never be rid of me. But for now, I'm glad to take a break.

2. Under the heading old dogs learning new tricks: I drive a 2016  Honda CR-V. It's not my favorite car I've ever had but I like it a lot. When we first got it, I hated the key fob thing because I couldn't figure out how it worked. But after several months, that little black device is just about my favorite thing about my car, because I drop it in the bottom of my purse and I never take it out. Which means I NEVER LOSE MY KEYS. For someone who spent an aggregate of probably a hundred hours a year looking for my car keys, this is like a miracle. Love.

3. I'm trying one of those meal services again. Last time we did Hello Fresh, and although it was really good and got me to try some things I would never have done on my own, we still had MadMax at home and it wasn't nearly enough food for him. Also there was so much packaging (that may have changed, I mentioned it when we quit and they said they were working on it). This time we're doing Blue Apron--no particular reason for that choice except an online friend could send me a free box. Once again, it's great for getting me out of my cooking rut (and the packaging is better, although still a problem). After I get a few more boxes I'll be able to send some free boxes to friends, so let me know if you want to try it. I've only received three boxes so far, but at this point I like it.

4. You all know that I am an Amazon fan, because it is the most amazing resource for buying books, and we don't have a bookstore in our town. But for the most part, I only use Amazon for books. I try not to buy other items from them, especially not if I can get them locally. It really kind of worries me how huge they are becoming and how easy they make it to order from them as opposed to getting dressed and actually leaving the house. A friend of mine lives in a city where she can order something from Amazon and have it delivered to her door within two hours.

5. (Remember those pod people in Wall-e? *shudders*) (although I have to admit that I can imagine certain situations where I would be thrilled to have that service)(the seductiveness of convenience. I admit it gets me more often than I probably want to admit)



6. Probably the best thing about our lack of bookstore, though, is that it got me back into using our local library. My most frequent contact with them is through their downloadable materials website, where I can get books for my Kindle 24 hours a day. But every month or two, I go to the actual physical library. It fills some deep inner weird need of mine to wander around a place full of books, choose some I want, and take them home with me.

But the good news is I'm only borrowing them, so I haven't lost any money if I pick something I end up not liking, and I don't need to find shelf space for them. For the size of our town, we have an amazing library. Last week was National Library Week, so hats off to all the libraries out there. If you haven't been to yours in awhile, highly recommend a visit. It's not just books-- ours has a whole room full of DVDs and CDs, and there are rows of shelves of audiobooks for road trips.

7. Spring. Yep, that's my good news for the week. Like most of the northern half of the USA, our winter held on for far longer and with far more snow and wind and storminess than is usual. But it is finally spring. We are supposed to hit 60 degrees today, the grass is starting to turn green, the snow is gone--even the enormous piles where the snowplows were shoving it. I'm happy.

Hope you have a lovely spring weekend. Sorry this is late, I wrote the first half of it last night and then I was so tired I bailed.




2 comments:

Laurel said...

I'm interested in your Blue Apron review!--- and, like you, we shunned those key fobs (keyless?) until our most recent car had no other option but to accept the fob. We worried that one of us would be driving, and the other would hop out of the car and unknowingly take the key with her, etc. etc. We dreamed up numerous situations where we thought the fob would cause a problem that a standard key would not. And, lo and behold, it has caused ZERO problems. The feature that I like most about it is the ability to unlock the car, start it and drive it without ever having to actually produce the fob (from a purse or pocket or whatever). Fellow "old dog" here!

Julie said...

Yay for libraries!!! We have a one year old grandbaby to share ours with now. Dan has taken her a couple of times (but he doesn't last very long there, oh well).

Put me down as interested in the Blue Apron review. We ended up with one box, accidentally, when our daughter was pregnant. Friends had gifted them a limited time offer, thinking it would help her, instead, the smell of some ingredient made her nauseous. I'd like to hear what you have to say, as we're in your boat, just the two of us.