With unspoken insinuation of desire for elaboration

So I was writing out this fairly sizable email to my father, (I never have time to be on the phone lately, so I wanted to catch him up on life in general) and I thought, "hey, self, you could also drop parts of this on your journal for personal reference and actually being informative to friends." So I am. :)

I've been doing okay, though amount of busy-ness in my life is aggravating. I'm getting to a point where I need to schedule things like grocery shopping and doing the laundry. (Seriously, we hadn't been shopping in I don't know how long, so we had to schedule it, and it took like two hours this past week because of how much stuff we needed.) This gets frustrating, but at least this week is a bit less packed.


( Current Life Things )
I'm beginning to think, due to how little free time I seem to have lately, about just requesting a few days off work in order to stay home and just clean up my life. My room is a hideous mess, I need to throw out any number of things and donate others, I have fallen behind on a lot of the non-work projects I want to be doing... and sleep. I know other folks who are busier than I am, and I just don't even understand how that works. I constantly feel like life is a bit out of control, and that I'm behind on everything, and I find myself, on rare occasions when I have free time, just essentially wanting to do non-stress things (like play Dragon Age again) to give my brain some sort of recovery time. Except I can't really afford to, with all the stuff I'm behind on. I'm torn between "I should commit less time to recreational things" and "why on earth would I stop doing things I enjoy?"

I guess at least I don't have to worry that I'm not living life fully enough?

Really looking forward to tomorrow evening and grilling some delicious fruits and veggies... hope other US-based folks also have a happy fourth. (Okay, the rest of you can also have a happy fourth, y'know, just with most likely 100% fewer fireworks.)

I constantly think in the back of my mind somewhat wistfully that I wish I were doing more of certain activities.

Included amongst them:
- walking (though I do generally do this a fair bit when I'm not freezing)
- reading
- composing
- cooking
- planning (and executing (and oh dear, that is such a project management phrase)) social activities
- sewing (mostly costuming)
- visiting people (somewhat local folks, but also farther afield folks whom I do not see often enough)

I am going to try to keep some sort of notation when I'm doing these things, I think. Theoretically a journal is not a bad idea for a place to put it, and heavens knows I'm not using it for too much else...

So in that spirit:
This weekend I cooked my bastardized (vegetarian) version of chilaquiles (which I should make a note to finish more of off in the next couple days before I leave for NY).
I also read Mastiff (by Tamora Pierce) (which I need to give back to Lynne).
Yesterday I did a small amount of composition (for Stranger Ways as we work on our next album - yay :)) that should be possible to flesh out into a complete song... providing we can lyricsify it, which I am the suck at.
And I've done some walking... maybe I should start trying to carry a pedometer with me or something to work out exactly what I'm doing here.

On the less successful front... I tried to rally a bunch of us to go do a dinner out for Restaurant Week and failed abysmally. Comedically. Ridiculously.

Basic summary:
Last week:
Me (to Beth): We should Restaurant Week.
Beth: We should! Haz free times?
Me: Buh? Um. Next Monday, Wednesday or Thursday, possibly?
Beth: Wednesday could work.
Me: OK! *sends email to five people, asking about freeness on Wednesday*
Person 1: I can't do that!
Person 2: Unfortunately, I'm now sick!
Me: Wait, I actually can't do Wednesday either, now!
Beth: And me neither.

All: Uh. Victory?

*headdesk*

So yeah. In the future, I really need to cordon off some Restaurant Week time in advance and actually plan with more than just one possible day available.

...but this is not it.
 
I did, though, want to mention that I made it through Arisia and its two concerts. ( Arisia details )

Oh, and now that Stranger Ways' new album is officially released, allow me to link our bandcamp site for it: http://strangerways.bandcamp.com/album/guilt-angst-fairy-tales

As with everything, I have a hard time not listening for flaws (and I particularly have a hard time listening to my voice), but it's really neat that there's a CD out there that I'm a part of.