I am dealing with shipping the last few copies of Rita 2 today. This is mostly a matter of ‘some lingering international shipments’ and ‘special snowflakes’.

One of the ways you can be a special snowflake who requies unique handling is to be someone who said “why yes, I would like one of those ten copies of the misprinted 2”. So I have had to open up the Box Of Misprints (it has MISPRINT! written on every visible side so there’s no confusion), and carefully take out six copies. I then sealed the box of misprints back up.

I have now put a pink post-it with an exclamation point on the cover of each of these books. Because I want there to be no question which books are misprints and which are nots, so I don’t accidentally send one to someone who isn’t expecting it.

I feel like I treat these things with the same caution I’d treat weapons-grade plutonium, sometimes. Store well away from the other half of the bomb. Do not put next to the other half until delivery is imminent. Avoid accidents.

Woo. First time doing yoga class in like a month – I’ve been away at cons, or just back from a con and too exhausted to think of leaving the house in the morning, for weeks. As usual, I pushed myself to near my limits, just to figure out what the hell they are after all this laxity. Turns out there are a few things that have definitely changed for the worse, and my stamina for holding poses feels less, but there are other parts that are still pretty flexible.

It’s gonna take a while for my spine to fully unkink after all that travel and sitting, though. Pop pop crackle.

There’s a new yoga teacher at the Y, with a different style of class, and a very citrus-y perfume. But it’s still mostly about taking the same poses and holding them.

I’m going to miss having the more extreme stretching and exercise of pole class; the Y is adding barre and high-impact intensity training, and I’m hoping those two things will fill in that gap for a while. I’ll start hitting those classes sometime this week or the next; it depends on how pooped I feel after just starting to do yoga again after so much of a break.

(Also annoyingly my pull-ups have decreased a LOT over this enforced break; I could casually do 5 or 6 when passing by the bar at the bathroom door, and now I struggle to do 3. It’ll return with regular practice, though.)

I really need to start doing some kind of exercise when I’m away from home like this, so I don’t have this total drop of flexibility and strength when several cons come in a row in the future. (I also need to avoid that if I can. But still.)

I’m having breakfast at Portage Bay Cafe. The dining room has this unusual split-level arrangement; half of it is higher than the other, with a low wall that comes up to about waist height for the people in the upper half.

I was seated right next to the wall, on the lower side, enjoying a really tasty ham scramble, when I see a hand casually slide over the wall and just dangle there. As if its owner was draping it out a car window.

Every now and then he’d kinda pick at one of his fingernails. Kinda gross, when you’re right below it.

After a bit of thought, I picked up a packet of sugar and slid it into this hovering hand. Fingers closed reflexively, and my gift was accepted. The hand drew out of sight.

A moment later, the old dude it belonged to poked his head over the wall. I waved. He said “Thank you!” and vanished.

And took his dangling hand with him.

Oh hell yes. I just had a salad made with local tomatos and locally made spicy cheese for the first time in like a month. It was exactly the right amount of food for my appetite, rather than a too-large portion that I don’t want to eat later but feel weird about throwing away.

The greens came out of a bag from Trader Joe’s, but everything else came from the local farmer’s market. Which is on Saturdays, and, well, cons happen on weekends, so I haven’t been able to stop by for the past three weeks. I was finally home on a Saturday morning again this past weekend.

Tastes like heaven.

Last night before going to the wedding, Jill offered me a couple of the perfumes she keeps in her purse. Both were kinda too floral for me, so I declined. And then wished I had some hanging around in my purse for those moments when I realize that, hey, this is a time when it would be nice to alter my scent from the default of ‘woman, vaguely raspberryish from my choice of hair products’.

So I hit up ZOMG Smells for a couple tiny bottles of their Spacebat. I’d met them at Geek Girl Con a couple years ago and gotten a few of their perfumes, and Spacebat is the one that I just keep on using, so I figured I needed a few tiny bottles.

And then I looked for a few other scents, to fill out the order and give my self variety. I quickly noticed that the ones I went for first had names like ‘Kuiper Belt Objects Unite In Vengeance’ or ‘Coronal Mass Ejection’. Add this onto the couple tiny vials I have of their ‘Oort’ and something becomes clear: I want to smell like space.

Okay, time to take a shower.

Ugh. The tub is filthy. It’s been needing a cleaning since before this month of cons. It is now downright dangerous because a conditioner spill that happened during one of these cons rendered the whole thing slippery.

I’ll clean it after I take this shower.

pause

No. I’m going to clean it now. I’ve been saying “I’ll clean it after this shower” the past several times I’ve showered, and it’s still filthy.

Well now that I’ve got this sponge full of bleach powder I may as well clean the bathroom sink, too.

And why not clean up some of these hair dye stains on the counter while I’m at it?

And now at last I think I can shower. 

Attending a friend’s wedding.

Dressing nicely to attend a friend’s wedding.

Knowing that I should dress nicely, but not so nicely as to become the center of all attention – it’d be rude to upstage the couple getting married.