Ontario enters step 2 and I'll contemplating a haircut

Today, the lockdown lifts a bit in Ontario. We are entering step 2. Personal care services are allowed to reopen, for instance. There are a bunch of other changes.

I would love to get my hair cut. However, I feel like many folks will be doing that today. The worst case is getting my hair cut during the weekday next week. I'll still be on vacation.

I'm enjoying my time off so far. I got more free cookies today. I went to a bookstore and got some great deals. I'm happy.

Pre-birthday outings and cookies

My friend took me out for a pre-birthday meal on Sunday. It was terrific. I rarely go out on Sundays. It was nice seeing civilization on a patio and catch up with my friend.

I have consumed more booze this month than all of last year. It's amazing what great weather and patios being available will do.

I am enjoying my vacation so far. I went out to get free cookies and a watermelon Italian soda that I got as a perk. Tomorrow, I have more free cookies that are a birthday perk. Yay!

Cookies, Oomomo, and a day off

Yesterday, I went to pick up two boxes of gourmet cookies for two friends. It was nice that I ended my day at 15:00. I headed out and it was a gorgeous afternoon.

After that errand, I ended up at Oomomo, a Japanese dollar store that is huge. It has been around for well over a year. It does take me a while to hop on any bandwagon. I was in heaven.

Today's my day off. I am enjoying taking a day off here and there.

My intern's farewell lunch

My intern's original work term was for eight months. Luckily, it got extended and we had him for an additional four months.

My role changed just after his extension had been set. He ended up with another team lead. However, our work still crossed paths and we still managed to communicate with each other regularly.

Back in April, when we thought that it was the end of his work term, I said that we'd have a proper farewell lunch for him when it was safe to do it. We were 1.5 months into the pandemic.

Well, his final day was Friday. I wanted a farewell lunch for him. So did our manager. I talked with our boss. He was good having just the three of us have lunch together. It would be safer with a small number of people there.

I had suggested a restaurant and my intern was game. He was delighted to get a free lunch, paid by our manager, to honour his efforts and accomplishments during his stay with us.

On Friday, I picked up my intern at his home and drove us over to the restaurant. It felt like old times, except that he was in the backseat of my car as I drove. Our manager met us there, as he had to pick up the gift that the company had for my intern.

At his home, I gave my intern a box of gourmet cookies. We love them. The store happens to be in my neighbourhood. He was thrilled.

We sat out in the patio for nearly 2.5 hours. The food was yummy and amazing. We had a lot of laughs while we chatted about a ton of topics.

Afterwards, we walked over to Baskin Robbins to get some ice cream. I was too full from my lunch to have some, but the other two got some.

When we were all done, my intern and I decided to get bubble tea. I treated him to whatever drink he wanted. We sat for a bit to chat before I took him home.

It was a lovely day. I know that I'll see him again, as we have plenty of eateries to discover. I let him know that whenever he was free, to let me know. He confirmed that he would take me up on my offer. He has one last year of undergraduate studies, which start in just over a week.

Friday lunch with good people at work

On Friday, a colleague, who is also my friend, wanted to cook for my intern and me. I was so thrilled that she wanted to feed us lunch.

She made chicken curry, which was delicious. My intern brought in rice, which was fluffy and perfect. I brought in gourmet cookies to complete our meal.

I like that all three of us came together to make our lunch work. My intern brought plates and cutlery. Good thinking!

Lunch was wonderful with good company.

Gourmet cookies make people happy

Friday was my student's last day at work. On Thursday, I got her a box of gourmet cookies as a thank-you gift.

She told me the most endearing story on Friday. She brought the cookies home on Thursday and asked her dad to have one after dinner. They both indulged in a cookie each. He has a sweet tooth and loved it.

They both went out after dinner, separately, to different commitments. Her mom arrived home later.

When my student came home, she let her mom know that I had bought cookies for her. Her mom said that she ate four cookies -- one of each flavour. Her mom doesn't have a sweet tooth, but found the cookies scrumptious. It speaks volumes.

I would probably get along with her mom. She loved the lemon delight ones the best. It's my favourite flavour.

I buy these cookies for special occasions and people. I'm glad that I made her day and her family's.

Students, plaid skirt, and a spanking

I have spent the last hour putting together farewell gifts for my students. Earlier in the day, I went out to get gourmet cookies that they love. I also gave them a mug with chocolates inside.

It has been great having them on board. I will be sad to see them go. They do need to head back to university. They are in a few classes together this upcoming term.

My guy likes thinking about my playing his student.

"I would spank you for every question you got wrong on my exam," he said.
"I like that. You'd spank me no matter what result I got on it," I noted.
"Yes, that's true," he replied.
"We both win. I need to find that plaid short skirt of mine," I replied.

He likes that skirt. He immediately got hard. I was already wet. It's all good.

The network is down - a perfect storm

It all started on Friday. Our content management system to author content was down just before lunch. We got database errors. My department seems paralyzed when such incidents take place. I got one of my students to report the problem.

Unfortunately, our helpdesk support is halfway around the world and doesn't look at off-hour issues. Ugh!

On the weekend, I had to do some preparation work. My team needed to create two documentation projects and requires all folks to not be working. I planned on doing this work on Saturday. Sure enough, I tried doing some copying work and database errors took place.

There errors were intermittent, though. I logged in using my regular account and I got tons of errors. I tried copying smaller sections with another administrative account and that worked. Weird.

Yesterday, I had my regularly scheduled 8 am meeting. I drive to work on the call. This meeting was delayed by half an hour. I called in about fifteen minutes from work. I couldn't connect to the network.

I walked into a meeting room that I had booked for my little team. My students told me that every network connection was down. It now made sense why I couldn't connect to my conference call. 

I walked over to the lunch room to get some hot water for my tea. I found out that there was a Canada-wide outage. Nice.

I headed back to my students to relay the news. I found out later that it was a global problem.

E-mail was down. I loved it. I didn't have any distractions. I didn't have to respond immediately to my manager's questions due to his incompetence.

Slowly, the network came back up. My team was able to log in to most of our applications and continue with our content projects. Others on my team weren't that lucky.

It was a trying day. My team handled it with grace and humour. We are good with teamwork, fuelled by cookies.

Busy Tuesday - feeling drained already

My first day back from a long weekend was busy at work. I have two new students to train. I'm dealing with two visitors from South America. I will be training all week, including two folks remotely.

I have only been to work for one day and already feel drained.

The funny thing is that I was perfectly fine after work going to the drug store to look at chocolate chip cookies that were on sale. It's amazing how food energizes me. I bought a couple of packs to bring to work for colleagues.

Here's hoping that this week ends quickly. I need another weekend.

A rarity - at work on a Wednesday, eating sandwiches on a different floor

I normally work from home on Wednesdays. Yesterday, I did for half the day. I had meetings from 08:00 till 11:00.

I then hauled my luggage and laptop into my car, and ran a couple of errands. I had to get some gourmet goodies from my friends.

I decided to drive into work and spend the afternoon wrapping up some tasks. Instead of sitting on my regular floor, at my regular desk, I went to a completely different floor of our building and worked in a quiet little room.

Each floor has a lunchroom. I went to fill up my mug with hot water for my tea. I saw a tray of sandwiches. At first, I felt weird about getting some, as it's not my regular team of folks that I work with. I had to use the women's room, so I left my tea in the room and then came back.

A sweet woman whom I don't see often said hi to me. She was in charge of said catered sandwiches. She was covering up the sandwiches, as she didn't want the bread to get hard. I helped her with that task. She insisted that I grab some sandwiches. Cool!

Things just work out, I suppose.

Android Oreo... sounds yummy!

I have had an Android phone for nearly a year now. I had been an iPhone user for five years. Before that, I was a BlackBerry user. I have been told that I am impartial when it comes to technology.

Yesterday, I installed the latest Android operating system, Oreo, on my phone. The good news is that nothing horrible happened during the upgrade. However, some odd things did occur:

• I have an app called SCENE, which tracks my points for free movies, snacks, and food. For some reason, after the installation, this app decided to automatically launch itself whenever it felt like it. I uninstalled it. I have a feeling that it isn't compatible with Oreo.
  
• Another app, iHeartRadio, decided to run in the background whether I wanted it to or not. I originally switched to this app because all radio stations in this network got removed from popular radio apps like TuneIn. I reinstalled TuneIn and the radio station that I enjoy listening to is back. Bye bye, iHeartRadio!

A while back, I installed System UI Tuner. It has a cool bunch of functions that are experimental on Android. I installed it because I wanted the battery percentage to appear in the upper right corner of my Pixel phone. Oddly, it isn't there by default like many phones.

Before Oreo, the percentage was right on the battery icon and it was difficult to read. With Oreo, it looks like what I was used to on my iPhone. You get a clear reading of the percentage next to the battery icon.

On the whole, Oreo seems a bit better performance-wise. I will given SCENE another try when a new version is available.

I wish I were an octopus this Valentine's Day

I seem to have a love-hate relationship when it comes to Valentine's Day.

As a child, I loved how we'd all write valentines to one another. I always looked forward to receiving them, as well as handing them out. As we get older, these exchanges seem few and far between. We don't do the same thing with our colleagues. It would look like we were hitting on them and we wouldn't want to break any rules out of the human resources policy book, right?

My guy asked me for help. He wanted me to provide a list of things that I wanted for Valentine's Day. Frankly, I was happy that I could spend more time with him, which was good enough to me. He wanted to get me something. So, I prepared a list for him.

My guy can be a traditionalist. He told me not to get him anything. He feels that the guy should give his sweetie gifts on Valentine's Day, but not the reverse. Of course, I did anyway, which I am that I will pay for in the end (yes, the pun was intentional).

He got me a lovely box of chocolate chip cookies and some fancy teas. He knows that I have a weakness for baked goods and that box of cookies was not on my list. The tea varieties were, but he chose to get them all in cute tin boxes. He is practical that way, as he knows that I drink tons of tea and could use some storage boxes.

I gave him a geeky gadget. I actually bought one for myself, too. It's a travel router. The cool thing about it is that you can configure your wifi connection as a hotspot. So, if you are in a European country where certain hotels only allow you to connect to their wifi connection with one device, this router is perfect. You can configure it as a hotspot and all your devices connect to the router. An added bonus is that the router acts as a battery charger. You can actually hook your cell phone or tablet to it.

Of course, I got my guy some chocolates. They are actually truffles. It helps that I live about a fifteen minutes' drive from a Lindt chocolate outlet.

Anyway, I didn't get my guy a card, but I sent this picture to him instead. It's fitting:

He does like the occasional love tap. I like touching and groping his backside. It is cute and it turns me on when I do.

Of course, with eight hands, you can do a lot of multitasking in the pleasuring department. It is a shame that I am not an octopus. Hey, you can't win 'em all.

New sandals, a spanking, and a cookie

It was an odd day. I got to work and didn't say a word to my guy. Our timing was simply off.

My guy was talking to a colleague when I got to my desk. I ended up returning a phone call. They walked away over to the colleague's desk. I ended up talking to two of my three writing colleagues, which took up most of my afternoon.

My guy was at his desk for most of my talks with my colleagues. We finally exchanged words on Skype. He asked me when I wanted to leave work. I told him the sooner, the better, before I would get bombarded with more questions.

The funny thing was that I had said goodbye to my colleagues. My guy apparently didn't hear that, as he was too focused on filling out his timesheet. He eventually made it over to the treehouse, explained that he was deaf, and apologized for being late.

We got into the backseat. I rubbed my guy's leg. It had cookie crumbs all over his navy blue slacks. He brushed them off. I told him that he was "crummy." He smiled and also noted that it didn't sound so charming.

I got hungry. My guy was kind to offer me his last cookie. We talked as I munched. Afterwards, he took the empty cookie wrapper from me.

"You're Cookie Monster," I said to him as we kissed. "But, you're not blue or have big eyes on top of your head."
"You must be a cock monster," he hinted. I looked at him funny. We both laughed.
"You mean Cockie Monster?" I asked.

He brushed the cookie crumbs off my skirt. He continued to place his hand on my tummy, leg, lap, and inner thigh, to gauge how ticklish I was.

He wanted to talk more about how ticklish I can be. I told him that I'd have to kiss him to make him shut up. It worked!

When we came up for air, he told me that I was a naughty girl. He wanted to spank me. I was game.

I obediently went over his knee. He started to spank me with his hand over my skirt. He lifted it up moments later and continued spanking me over my panties.

"I don't know why you're punishing me. I am a good girl."
"No, you're not," he replied. "A good girl does not wear black lacy panties and have fingers up her wet pussy."

He was still spanking me. They were hard smacks, with several of them landing on my left buttock. It hurt a bit, which caused my legs to kick up.

"You're wearing your old sandals! I told you not to wear them," he said, pretending to be angry and smacking my left buttock even harder.
"They are new sandals!" I exclaimed. He paused.
"You're right. I apologize," he said, rubbing my left buttock. "I take that back."
"How can you take a spanking back?" I asked him.
"You're right. I need to spank the other buttock as many times as the left."

And, so, he did just that. It was cute.

Spank-me-hard cookies

I came across this picture a while back and loved it. I imagine that I had found it around Valentine's Day.

Heart-shaped sugar cookies in this picture represent who I am. I'm not saying that I am someone who sugarcoats what I say. I am quite the opposite. I am far too candid to know how to sugarcoat anything that I say.

I have been told by many folks over the years that I am a "nice person" or that I'm "sweet." I suppose that these characteristics are true, particularly when many of these folks do not know one another. I didn't pay them to make these flattering comments, either!

Perhaps my personality makes me enjoy receiving a sound spanking more. I have never truly done anything bad in my life to get me in serious trouble. I get turned on about the notion of getting a spanking. I love the anticipation of getting punished because I have been a bad girl. I want to be spanked. I ache for a spanking sometimes. As the heart-shaped cookie mentions, I want to be spanked hard.

I absolutely love it when my guy makes up the most ridiculous reasons for my getting a spanking. If I am not online when he wants to talk to him, my lack of online presence merits my getting paddled. When I tease him relentlessly, he will pull me over his lap, pull down my pants, and spank me with his hand. When I provoke him by saying that my backside doesn't hurt as much, he lowers my panties and spanks me harder, which makes me playfully regret pushing him to spank me that hard.

I enjoy being spanked for several minutes. My guy is methodical about spanking my bottom, which I appreciate. I get even more aroused when he tells me why I have been bad as he smacks my buttocks.

One of these days, I will need to bake heart-shaped cookies and let him know that I deserve a spanking from him. I probably need another batch to indicate that I want to be pinched hard, too.