Everybody’s working on the weekend…

You know you’re a city dweller when… this morning at 7am there were individuals having a music party down in the not-an-alley* behind my building.  And my only thought was “not my choice of music, but not bad” rather than “these crazy kids why’re they blasting music at 7am on a Sunday?”  And then someone played what I swear sounded like the opening notes to the X Files theme, and they packed up and went home/off to breakfast.

(*it’s totally an alley running through the block, but an alley that’s about ten feet wide and banded on either side by low dividers and greenery of the surrounding apartment buildings, rather than actual building walls.)

But wait, I begin at the ending, rather than the start.

Friday I discovered that the Reading Room at the Seattle Public Library (Central Branch) is not quite so magnificent as the NYPL main branch. I’m not sure anything in the US (or Canada) can match the NYPL main branch, honestly.  That said, and without feeling at all a traitor, the Reading Room at SPL Central is pretty damned awesome. Not because it’s pretty (it’s modern, and attractive, but not gorgeous) but because it does the job. So. Damned. Well.  The seats are comfortable but not so much that you forget why you’re there and slope off for a nap.  The lighting – dear gods the lighting.  It’s perfect: bright enough to read by, and angled so that no matter how I adjusted screen or page there was no glare.  And it was quiet.  The kind of page-rustling quiet places advertise but don’t always deliver.  The kind of quiet where I felt guilty opening my soda, because it was so noisy

(and oh yeah: you can bring your coffee or soda in, so long as it’s covered)

Anyway.  That was Friday morning, that and discovering the wonder that is the research Spiral.  Thank you, friendly librarian whose name I didn’t catch, for explaining how that works.  That’s marvelous.  The afternoon was lunch with the twinling and the diva, and then we hit Uwajimaya, where I spent a lot of time saying “no, I don’t need this right now, I can come back and buy this when I plan to make x/y/z.”  But I still packed up with various rices, good sesame oil, and various and sundry other things.  And then I went home and…I’d love to say I worked, but actually I crashed for a few hours, and then did some pleasure reading.

Saturday was all about working on a client’s project.  And, um, napping.  I may be fighting off an attempt at the flu, but my flu shot must be working because all I’m getting is tired and slightly snotty.  And people might say I was slightly snotty already.  :-)

Sunday was off to the Sunday Writing Cafe, wherein I did another few thousand on the cracktastic project that may get the internal greenlight this week, so more on that later, and then the Ballard greenmarket to buy heirloom garlic and raw honey (and not to buy any of the root vegetables therein because I won’t have time to make soup this week anyway) and thence home to… well, to sit out on my balcony for a while, because while everyone back home on the East Coast is battening down for what my be a historic blizzard (they’re prognosticating the potential for up to 24″ for NYC and closer to 30″ for Boston), it was in the lower 60’s and sunny, here.  So. Damned. Bizarre.

Anyway, I’ve learned three things about my balcony.

1.  The cats do not like me being out there without them (it’s not been cat-proofed yet)
2.  It’s going to be a tech-free zone, because I thought about a tablet or phone falling from my grip down many stories to its death, and shuddered.
3. One of my neighbors is growing lavender.  I have…mixed feelings about this.  On the one hand, yay for growing things.  On the other…it had to be lavender?  On the third hand, I should be thankful it was only lavender…

And now that I’ve gotten a heavy dose of vitamin D, time for some more work, because I run my life based on deadlines, not arbitrarily-decided archaic days of the week.  And Monday-Thursday are already looking to be buuuuuuuuuusy….