Update from my friend with cancer

On Saturday, I received an update from my friend who is battling leukemia. She has finished her treatments at a clinic in Houston. It's a clinical trial.

She is now staying at an Airbnb. She is a high risk to travel during this pandemic, as she has had a liver transplant. As a result, she's not flying home and will likely continue her stay in Houston for a bit.

I hope that her treatments are effective. She has to do a biopsy next to find out. I hope that there is good news.

Poor sleep, but a nap in the day helped!

Last night, I didn't sleep well. It was a combination of staying up late, waking up to a bit of foot pain, and hearing loud noises in the neighbourhood.

Luckily, I had completed the bulk of my work and only had to do some minor updates on Thursday. One of the benefits of working from home is napping when sleepy. It's exactly what I did.

Here's hoping that it'll be quieter and smoother tonight.

Finding items to use at home and making tons of iced tea

One more workday before the weekend. I am looking forward to it.

My doing spring cleaning and reorganizing various parts of my home has made me find items that I should use more often. I am using a heart-shaped bar soap, liquid soap, and a bath sponge in a gift box that I had never opened until now. They are all nice.

I am a tea drinker. Being at home, I drink a lot of iced tea these days. When I was in the office, it was always hot tea.

I love my tea collection. I bought a ton of tea when I went to London, UK and Istanbul, Turkey several years ago. I also have various tea varieties that I have bought locally.

There are some positives working and staying at home. Naturally, I miss people and being able to move around without distancing myself from others.

My intern's work term has been extended at the eleventh hour!

It's amazing what a difference a day makes. Well, it's kind of more than a day.

On Tuesday, I had a talk with my manager. He let me know that he was trying his best to extend our intern to stay an additional four months. He told me, "Don't hold your breath." It has been difficult due to hiring freezes.

Yesterday, I had a good chat with my intern. I thanked him for everything. He said nice things about working with me. It was great.

Well, in our team meeting, our manager asked me if it was okay to assign work to our intern. I had to remind him that his time with us was limited. It was only then that my manager said that our intern is with us for another four month.

Both my intern and I are ecstatic that he's staying. He genuinely likes working with us. It was just odd how secretive our manager was about sharing this news, which drives me nuts.

The best part of the chat that I had with my intern was that we both like Marie Kondo's method of organizing. He has her book. Impressive!

Losing track of days, except for Wednesdays and Saturdays

I have been losing track of the days since I have been working and staying at home. I realized on Monday that Good Friday is coming up.

It's Easter this weekend. Wow!

Luckily, I do know when it's Wednesday and Saturday each week. I go out to get groceries and more those days.

I'm still working on my drawer organization. I need to deal with my pajamas next. I'm not thrilled with a lot of them, so I'll end up donating many.

Late checkout, noise, and customer service

It's December. Where did this year go?

I am at home, ending my staycation. My last evening at the hotel was nice. After work, I headed to the check-in counter and asked the man there if I could do a late checkout on Saturday. He asked when. I said 2 pm. He made it 3 pm. Nice!

He asked me how my stay was. I said that it was great. The only bad thing was construction along highway 401. Drilling and construction starts between 10 pm to 11 pm, and runs overnight. I said that it's rather disruptive. The good thing is that I come equipped with earplugs, so I'm good.

He apologized and advised that hotel management has asked the construction folks to change the time. It obviously hasn't helped. This construction is building a train line underground.

What I did expected was a knock on the door an hour after I had talked to him. He personally came up to my room to deliver some snacks and drinks, to apologize for the noise. I appreciated it and thanked him.

That's great customer service. Sadly, this construction goes until 2021.

Some things are them, but not really

My ex-guy sent me a happy birthday message an hour after my birthday was over. He was late, which is who he is.

Some things never change. And yet, a ton has changed.

He has written a couple of e-mails to me since we broke up. I haven't replied to them. He said that he rarely checks his e-mail. He has written to me more from this account as of late.

I still need time away from him. This vacation has been therapeutic and helpful in my getting over him.

Mushy and sweet

Whenever my guy and I have to part for a certain period, I tend to be the one who says that I don't want him to leave. He'll reassure me that it won't be long and that we'll keep in touch on Skype.

The other day, we had the complete role reversal. I drove him to the airport. I parked. He sat there.

"I don't want to leave you. I want to spend more time with you," he said, boyishly.
"I don't want you to leave, either. But, you have a flight to catch," I reasoned.
"I know. I just want to be with you longer," he stated.
"We can kiss, but you do have to catch your flight. You're kind of late and we can't have the police come over to tell you to go," I said, with both of us looking at the police car.

We kissed. It was good. We then got out of my car.

My guy went to get a cart. I did my usual bit by fetching his computer rolling back. He loaded the rest of his bags onto the cart.

We hugged. I knew that I was hugging him tightly. He reciprocated.

It's nice that he is good at expressing how he feels. He is mushy these days. It's so sweet.

The date and my guy saying that he does not want it to end

Whenever my guy and I are on a date, I am the first one to say that I don't want it to end. My guy won't say it, but he hints that he feels the same way. 

Last Friday, we had dinner. It was just past 18:00 when he looked at his phone.

"Should you be going to your nail appointment now?" he asked.
"My appointment is at 19:30," I replied.
"Oh, I thought it was at 19:00. Good. I can stay with you a bit longer."

He thought that it was the latter time because that was the time I was supposed to go on Wednesday. I got a call from the nail place fifteen minutes before I was going to head out, saying that the aesthetician had an emergency and my appointment had to be rescheduled.

It was a fun time out with my guy. I'm glad he told me that he wanted to spend more time with me. I always feel the same way.