rowyn

Monday, December 9

This was Eliyahu's last day with me for a bit: they're visiting another friend and stopping briefly in Canada to reset their leaving-the-country clock, then returning to my place on December 19. They'll be cat-sitting while I visit my parents over Christmas, and I'll have a few weeks with them before they leave again in mid-January.

The weather was once again nice for December. I'd thought about walking in the neighborhood, but decided to drive to the park anyway, since it was Eliyahu's last day here and I was unlikely to bother driving (or even walking) after they left. On Sunday, as I drove us home, Eliyahu had commented, "Did Cinnabon go out of business? I haven't seen one at an airport in ages."

"No -- there's one just a block from the bubble tea shop, in fact. Dang, now I want a cinnabon. They make this "center of the roll" concoction that's just cut-up chunks from the middle now. It's so good. I am not turning the car around to get a cinnabon now."

But we did walk to Cinnabon after getting our usual post-walk drinks from the bubble tea place. I got a thai ice tea with large boba like I always do. Eliyahu got hot cocoa. I tried it and am left with the sad truth that if I want my Very Favorite hot chocolate, I need to make my own hot chocolate bombs. (I tried buying some but the first professional version was not nearly as good as the ones I made myself, and the other two kinds I got are unlikely to be better). The second-best form is to melt chocolate chips into milk, which is much easier than making hot chocolate bombs and I'll probably stick with that.

I was saved from buying a pack of center-of-the-roll concoctions because they didn't sell them in packs. Instead, I bought two for me (one for when we got home and one to save for later) and one for Eliyahu. And two extra frosting packs because I love Cinnabon's cream cheese frosting.

At home, I took a shower and then Eliyahu and I both had our cinnabons for lunch. I did some dictation word salad before taking a post-walk nap.

I finished reading over The Secret Dragon outline during CoffeeQuills' stream. I also wrote a post for the 4thewords forum to describe what I count in 4thewords (I will count literally anything I write, plus giving myself editing/art credit in word-count form. But some of the things I count feel more legit than others.) Doing so coaxed CoffeeQuills and some others from the stream to reply with their takes, so that was fun. I discovered that not only am I not the only person to use "editing credit" -- I figured there'd be others -- but there was another person who used "art credit", too. Whee!

While I did that, Eliyahu panicked over issues with their tickets. They'd had a friend buy the tickets for them, and the friend hadn't sent the confirmation number so Eliyahu couldn't check in online. And they also couldn't reach the friend. Eventually, they called the ticketing service the friend had gone through, and got everything they needed for online check-in.

Afterwards, Eliyahu told me, "It was really nice that you were so calm while I was panicking about the tickets."

Me: "Oh, well, my line of thought was basically, Oh no. Eliyahu may not be able to leave tomorrow. Darn. I'll have more time to spend with them. Such a shame if that were to happen."

Eliyahu: <3 <3

They ran around packing up. Their flight left at 6:30AM; because the airport in my area is quiet in the early morning, they wanted to get to the airport by 5:45AM. It's a half-hour drive, so I told them to wake me at 4:45AM. I thought about making them take an Uber, but I often wake in the early morning and stay up for an hour playing with me phone, so I figured this wouldn't be that different.

Tuesday, December 10

I woke up at 1:50AM, checked the clock, and went back to sleep. Around 3:30AM, I woke again, checked the time, and again went back to sleep. The next time I woke, I tried to fall back to sleep and then realized I had to check the clock first. 4:44AM. Well, perfect.

I got up, checked that Eliyahu was ready to go, and threw on clothes for the drive. One advantage of early-morning flights: no traffic to speak of on the way to the airport.

At the airport, I very carefully dropped Eliyahu at arrivals instead of departures. I don't know why I am so bad at dropping people at departures. This time I even remembered that I was supposed to take the ramp up to Departures. Then I saw the sign saying "Arrivals" and my brain went "yes, I'm sure I want to follow that sign instead." Brains be weird.

We got to the airport around 5:30AM: plenty of time. After dropping Eliyahu at the curb, I started to pull away and then remembered I didn't have anything queued up to read on the drive back. So I pulled over again, and opened Hoopla to check out The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet again. I mainly listen to podcasts while driving or exercising, and while Eliyahu was here, I talked to them instead. So I hadn't bothered borrowing the audiobook again after it auto-returned. I spent some time finding the right place; Hoopla remembered where I had left off on returning it. But before it auto-returned, the car had started playing the audiobook several times while I wasn't actually paying attention to it: when I was coordinating with Eliyahu about where to pick them up after I reached the airport; when I was warming up the car while clearing it off so I could take the cat to the vet; when I started the car while Lyric was hiding under it, to convince her to come out from under it so I could take her inside to the vet. So it'd gotten a few minutes ahead. Once I found about the right spot, I drove home.

I have around 3 hours left of Small Angry Planet, so I guess I'll finish it. It's not bad. It's the sort of book that looks like it ought to appeal to me: it's got queer characters and a diverse cast and (at least so far) it's not about protagonists overcoming obstacles with violence. (It hasn't been violence-free, but it's pretty light on it as science fiction novels go.) It's very slice-of-life. I should like it more than I do. But instead, it's just okay.

At home, I went back to bed and slept until 10AM. After getting up again and eating breakfast, I drew the day's Apothecaria and uploaded it. My reference picture for this one was a photo of Lyric. Cats are so fun to draw. I'm sorry that after all this time I never got the knack of drawing lynxes, though.

Next, I spent a little while doing dictation word salad and then got all the dictation word salad loaded into 4thewords. That left me about 3300 words shy of completing the 250k quest. So close!

Instead of working to finish it up, I ate lunch and played some Race for the Galaxy. I shared the notes document for The Secret Dragon with Tuftears to see if he had any suggestions (he only had a few but they were good ideas, very glad I did this) and went back to bed for Second Nap.

I did a small amount of writing before CoffeeQuills' stream, working on actually writing The Secret Dragon. After all this time of working on notes for it! During and after the stream, I continued to write The Secret Dragon, until I hit 250,000 words for the last 44 days. With 8 hours to spare. \o/

I went through my bedtime routine, including letting the cat in and giving her a snack on the loveseat. After her snack, she sprawled on top of me for an hour, while I thought, It's bedtime and I should go to bed but...cat. At length, I disturbed the kitty (she was still lying on me!) and went to bed.