Elayne Riggs' Journal (for Leah)

Thursday, June 08, 2023

Silly Site o' the Day

After logging onto my laptop (which works fine now) to clear my inbox, I set off in our closed and air-conditioned car to pick up and deliver food to Mom in NJ. Everything went smoothly without incident. We needed masks outside, and for a time even in the car this morning as we went through the worst of the smoke and haze (and there are still wildfires in NJ as well!), but everything else was fine and we were home and exhausted around 3 PM. I logged on again to once again clear my inbox and give myself a sneak preview of what I need to do tomorrow, napped for an hour or so, then got up in time for a couple baseball games. Even with the reason being different, it was heartening to see people around our neighborhood masked up, as we've been researching as much as we can with so few people keeping track now and we've discovered the COVID transmission rates rising again. I think we'll be masked up again for Saturday's shopping trip, and I'll continue to wear them on the bus during my weekly commute. If nothing else, masks can hide monkey beards, and I think we can all agree that's a Good Thing.

Wednesday, June 07, 2023

Silly Site o' the Day

The day began at 4:30 AM with a massive calf cramp in my right leg (you know, the one I'll need for my 200-mile drive tomorrow) that wouldn't quit for at least a minute and a half, followed by the toilet overflowing. Work was fine, including my usual lovely monthly chat with my boss, until I downloaded new software and the laptop stuck in restart mode, which required multiple bits of trickery to get it to work again and ate over an hour of my work time. Oh, and the sky is orange in NYC and unhealthy for living beings, so that's another worry for tomorrow's journey. Yeah, kind of the perfect storm. I hope this means everything's going to go smoothly for the next few days! Please make at least tomorrow a big box of nothing.

Tuesday, June 06, 2023

Silly Site o' the Day

The atmosphere looks like a Martian sky today, courtesy of the winds from the north carrying the remnants of Canadian wildfires. Yellowish and eerie! You couldn't tell in Manhattan at noon, but by the time of my homeward-bound commute there was no escaping it. Very glad to be back in air conditioning! Another satisfying in-office day as well, helping at least four partners who were also in, Tuesdays being our busiest day. I hope the commute doesn't leave me too exhausted, I have a long drive on Thursday and I don't have a lot of recovery time. But I'm grateful for a Manhattan that now smells more of marijuana than of urine in the warmer weather! A positive tradeoff, which leads me to this video with helpful tips on how to pretend you're not high.

Monday, June 05, 2023

Silly Site o' the Day

The laptop is all packed up and ready to bring into the city tomorrow morning, and I've rearranged my mouse inventory so the home office setup has the same brand of cordless optical mouse I'll be leaving in my work locker (I mean, toting a mouse back and forth every week is just silly) and the one I just opened is now attached to my home Mac. Little by little things are falling into place.  was even able to reserve "my" spot through the end of the month, and it appears I'll be quite active during June with three medical appointments and a trip to Mom's on Thursday, not to mention various local festivals and events. England is probably not in the cards this year, which is just as well because invisible cows (via BoingBoing) still freak me out. You can hear them chewing at night, you know.

Sunday, June 04, 2023

Silly SIte o' the Day

Another nice cool day, another evening of a crying baby and a basketball bouncing over in Yonkers. But it was a good day anyway, as I finished a graphic novel adaptation of the Monkey King odyssey as well as the first season of American-Born Chinese, which led me to make a delicious stir fry (my second cooking of the day) and I'm still waiting for last weekend's comics order to arrive so I'm actually running low on graphic novels now. We've been chatting on Facebook Messenger with one of Robin's college friends who's planning on visiting us come October, which led me to remember I've been saving this in my Facebook feed for awhile:

A bit old, but I'm running low on Silly Sites...


Saturday, June 03, 2023

Silly Site o' the Day

The weather has cooled down beautifully, leaving us sleepy enough to need the entire morning before going shopping, which we spent watching the FA Cup final. Not much to do this afternoon either, and now there's a heck of a basketball game going on in one of the many backyards facing our house. I know it won't last, it's like 13-year-old kids, but I need to cherish these few times between the cold and the heat when we can fling the windows wide open and outside noise be damned. And after all, staying in a pleasant home is better than looking at dinosaur statue failures any day.

Friday, June 02, 2023

Silly Site o' the Day

For the second week in a row, even though I got through my workload and things are manageable once more, I found myself conking right out after logging off at 3 PM. Could have been the coming storm that woke me at 5 and continues to get more ominous, even though it's scheduled to pass soon and end this hot weather, at least temporarily. It's just one of those evenings when I want to clear my DVR a bit (finally getting through the last episodes of His Dark Materials about a year later), or at least go window-shopping at CatVana (via BoingBoing).

Thursday, June 01, 2023

Silly Site o' the Day

White Rabbits, and the weather is heating up! The third extremely busy workday in a row, but it appears tomorrow should be back to normal, just in time for the weekend. Until then, I'm trying to keep this creature happy (via BoingBoing) by keeping that mouse pointed on the browser screen...

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Silly Site o' the Day

Ha, I thought I was swamped with work yesterday? Nothing compared with today, when it was non-stop work, both expected and not-as-much, with tons of in-box interruptions. I managed to finally get on top of things, give or take my laptop's apps screwing up our home printer (at least we can still print from our Apple devices), and even though I have a lot of work to take care of tomorrow all the deadline-oriented stuff is in and my in-box is once again into the single digits. It wasn't easy! Maybe I'll light a candle from the Virgins on Fire company (via BoingBoing) to relax...

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

Silly Site o' the Day

Just a lovely day in Manhattan, although I could have asked for a smoother commute (especially home). I'm starting to get used to working in the office once a week, reconnecting with folks I haven't seen in person the last few years, grazing on the tasty and mostly healthy snacks in our "thrive cafe" (I mean, they have hard-boiled eggs and three kinds of cheese, go wrong!), and of course getting my weekly poke bowl for lunch. I made an extra trip to the bank, as our house's washing machine was broken (as Robin found out after half our laundry was soaked and impossible to dry) and we'll have to call a laundry service tomorrow because goodness knows when the landlord will finally fix it. Other than that, my work day was jam-packed and I just want to collapse now. But not in any of these bathrooms.