Yesterday at work I got an email saying that I had eighteen hours of personal holiday to use by the 30th or I would lose it. I talked to my new boss at the training session, and the HR person was able to convert eight hours of vacation to personal holiday, but no more, since it had to be time I'd taken since my conversion to being salaried. That was my Juneteenth day off, for those keeping track at home. My boss suggested I take some time off today and tomorrow, but I had meetings in the morning both days, so I am taking the afternoons off, and then the morning off on Monday to go to a thrilling meeting about town planning that our condo board president suggested we board members should attend. So this is what I did with my unexpected freedom today:
Once I logged off of work, I went for a long, very hot walk with my former neighbor, who came back to the old neighborhood to say hi to everyone. Afterwards she gave me some peaches. Then I talked to a guy who is writing a book about people who feel disillusioned with the church or other Christians but choose to stay anyway, and he seemed very happy with my contribution. Guess I'm efficient, too - he said the interview would take about forty-five minutes, but after twenty minutes he said I'd given him plenty of information. Travalon came home not long after that (he has short hours at work at the moment), and he wanted to go to a new coffee shop on Atwood called Forward. He got some "deconstructed cake" mocha concoction with Ghirardelli chocolate, blood orange, and oat milk. I didn't want caffeine that late in the afternoon, so I got a rose French soda, which was as delicious as it was beautiful.
(I had already drunk some of it before thinking of taking a photo.) We hung out there for a while, and that was my afternoon vacation today. Then we battled terrible traffic so I could attend another organizing class with my Union peeps. Tonight we were supposed to do role-playing, but fortunately there wasn't time for everyone in the class to get up and act in front of everyone else. I think I could handle the role of Reluctant Worker, but not Union Organizer. The weirdest rule (that everyone who did the role-playing broke) was that we weren't supposed to say "we" but "you," which seems really counterintuitive. I guess the emphasis is what the Union can do for the other person, but I thought the whole point is that it is all of us working together. We had pizza, and there was a leftover piece for Travalon (it was - don't read this part, Jilly Moose - mushroom pizza), but that wasn't enough for him for dinner, so he used the parmesan garlic sauce we got in the "Welcome Home!" package we got at Make Music Madison to flavor some chicken wings. He gave me three little ones, and they were very tasty. Maybe I should have taken a picture of the stuff in the package. It was so random: dishwasher pods, his and her deodorant, some sauces, and I can't even remember everything. I think it was the deodorant that got me: "Welcome to your new home! Now stop stinking!"
I was going to take a late rosary walk in my high vis gear, but when I stepped outside, it was sprinkling, and I could see lightning in the distance. I came back inside just in time before it began to pour, but then I realized I should bring in the dracaena in a pot with no drainage or it would drown, so I got soaked anyway. Plus the plant already got soaked, and not long after that, the rain stopped, so my heroic effort was probably for naught. At least I tried, right?
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