Productivity

The lingering travel high from Dover on Monday allowed me to stay home this weekend and make some much-needed progress in the house. On Saturday, I finally found my bag of tools (silly me, why didn't I think to look in a box from my bedroom labeled stuffed animals and shoes?) and put together the loft for my twin mattress, my computer desk, and a small bookshelf. Putting together the loft and desk by myself was no small undertaking, as those who have helped me in the past can attest to. Especially the loft... I had to engineer a tower of boxes to the exact height to hold one end of the heavy top frame in place while I got all the hardware in place to hold it up. But I did it! Then I finished organizing the kitchen this morning... it is quite possible I was more productive in the house over the last two days than I have been in the entire month I have lived there. :)

Saturday night, Jose had the weather flight over for a game night... as in, the board type. I think more time was spent just hanging out, eating, and watching football, hehe. But it was great, he built a fire in the fireplace and it was nice to just sit in his huge living room with everyone. It is definitely starting to feel like winter here. I will have to get brave and build a fire in one of my own fireplaces one of these days. I loooove walking down my street and smelling everyone's fires. :)

I must sadly report the demise of my cell phone yesterday... turns out that dropping them in water is bad. I tried the "bowl-of-rice" method to dry it out (if you don't know what I mean, you're not alone... the girl in the cell phone store looked at me like I had two heads when I tried to explain), but it only halfway worked... it can turn on and make calls, but the people on the other end can't hear me, and they sound to me like they are talking through wax paper. To make a long story short, it means I got a new phone today. It is bright yellow, so at least there is a somewhat happy ending to this story.

One other thing that has been on my mind lately is how much I love my drive to and from work. I'll be honest, there were a couple times after I moved into the house that I wondered if living 35 minutes from work was the right decision. And yes, sometimes it would be a lot more convenient to live closer. But then there are so many reasons that I have come to love about the route: I have seen some of the most incredible sunrises and sunsets of my life... the drive is mostly north/south through farmland, so I can watch the sun rise or set the whole time without ever getting blinded. I love that I pass a field full of fluffy sheep... and one of them is black. I love that most of the houses in the villages I drive through have been there since before the Constitution was signed. I love that I regularly pass tractors and horse-drawn carriages. I love that sometimes shallow fog sits in the fields on both sides of the road, and I can just make out a horse or cow through it. I love the abandoned old red double-decker bus in a field and how iconic it looks. I love the isolated church that looks so mysterious rising out of a bed of shallow fog. And when it's dark and I can't see these things, I devote that time to praying (with my eyes open, of course, hehe). That's 35 uninterrupted minutes I can spend talking to God... and I always get home before I run out of people and things to pray about.

This week starts out with an OG run tomorrow morning, so I better get home and rest up... the OG/CC does not take it easy on those!