Day One-hundred-and-thirty-seven: Checking them off

I'm checking off items on my to do list that must get done one by one and adding them two by two. Fortunately I'm adding them less frequently. I still have a lot to do in now less than two weeks. Today was the most productive day I've had in a long time. I think it was aided by getting out early today, even though that was to the dentist to have two silver amalgams replaced with the new composite fillings. The topical and two numbing shots meant that I didn't feel a thing during the work but now my gum is really sore.

After the dentist, I went and got my free flu shot. Since I'm heading back into truly cold weather for the first time in a long time, I thought I would get a vaccination this year. I haven't gotten sick in previous years without it but then I haven't been in hot houses and cold outdoors in rapid succession for about that long. I was ready to pay my co-pay but it was free.

Then I went down to Les Schwab to buy chains for the Prius. If I don't use them, I can return them for a full refund after April of next year. It was worth driving that far for them with that guarantee. Since this was around noon, I had a brainstorm, unfortunately after I had driven by Sirayvah. Over the last couple of months, I have tried to eat lunch at Sirayvah on a Sunday and this last weekend on Saturday, only to discover that they aren't open for lunch on either day, just dinner. (You'd think that I wouldn't be reading their schedule so precisely to need to discover each day's schedule individually.) But today I remembered that they are open for lunch Monday through Friday. So I went around a long block to get back to it and had a full, and filling, organic Thai meal. It started with a pumpkin soup, followed by a delicious appetizer, and then a spicy eggplant entree. I was going to skip dessert but the waitperson mentioned sticky rice with mango. I ate it all. It's a great place to eat and probably a good thing that I can't seem to eat there more often.

I've also arranged to have my plants watered, all of them, if it doesn't rain, and just the ones under the eaves, if it does. I got the back yard mowed with the clippings put in my compost pile. I finished this cycle of watering, although I decided to wait until tomorrow to apply the deer thwarting stink. I also made a temporary fix to my shed. (I've propped a weighted board up on the plastic corner post to keep it from bowing away from the panels it is supposed to hold securely.) This temporary fix should hold until I can figure out how to permanently stiffen it.

Unfortunately, I've added a couple rather large items. Last night I accepted the responsibility for making my second speech before I go on the road trip. (I keep wanting to say my vacation, but I'm on vacation right now. I'm just going to change the location of my vacation.) I also added something that I should have done in September but technically don't have to do at all, and that is write reviews for the people who reported to me the first six months of the year. Well, as a friend and fellow manager at Amdahl said: "Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well." Doing something poorly just isn't in my make up, more so in my Life after Layoff as everything I do is for me and my standards alone.

My daughters are off on a girl's weekend out in Portland, Oregon. They are staying just a block away from the Powell Street Bookstore. When I talked with my oldest daughter earlier this week, she said that she had already cleared a place to put her new book purchases.