Woo, Royals! That was quite the series. If the Mets follow the same schedule as KC then next year is all theirs.

The fire alarm went off in my entire building not too long ago. I went downstairs and found a maintenance guy already there, and we were all, so I guess the building isn't actually on fire, huh? Fire department was here to verify we are not on fire, and they just left. My hearing is still messed up from the alarms.

In other news, we're getting actual precipitation in San Francisco right now. Also, tomorrow morning is going to be rough.

Our fire/door alarm has been going off all week. In 8 years it has never indicated an actual fire, or even gone off when someone slammed the front door hard enough to break it. Only false alarms on holiday weekends. It's made me seriously consider whether I have gloves with thick enough insulation to protect me while sawing through the damn thing's power cable with a hunting knife.

Maybe if I just stopped sleeping I could catch up on all my onerous tasks.

Ugh, right? I was going to see about doing something fun next weekend, but I can already tell I won't have time or energy.

I have to get up at sunrise to avoid feeling time pressure.

I've been getting up before sunrise, and it's no great shakes.

We had a special musical installation for a new minister at my UU congregation.

That kind of fits in with the question about if it's a Northeast thing, because the UUs are New England-based, right?

I've been getting up before sunrise, and it's no great shakes.

WORD.

It's still raining! I can't even be mad about it.

Rain rain raaaaaaaaaain, I don't mind. As the song says.

Walter and the cats do mind, for Louisiana bred critters they quickly forgot how to deal with precipitation (Walter actually likes the rain per se but the sound of raindrops hitting the patio cover freaks him out, poor thing, and he can't make it past that horrible noise to get to the open air. I have to let him out the front door on a lead or he is stuck inside), but it'll stop soon enough and they can resume their normal lives.

I left my desktop crockpot on all weekend after making mulled apple juice on Friday. Oops. Nothing on fire, though, so I'm going to pretend it never happened (other than telling y'all, keep it under your hats)

Sun was actually up (if behind clouds) when I came to work this morning! Nice.

Ugh. Can't brain today. Luckily my boss isn't in yet and I have no work to do.

I spent Friday and Saturday working on my dragon mask. The instructions said to use thin cardboard, like the kind cereal boxes are made of. The big art supplies store I went to only had much thicker cardboard--maybe three times as thick as cereal box cardboard (at least it wasn't corrugated.) So the mask took over ten hours to make, compared to the five hours the instructions said. Plus I got blisters on my fingers from using a scissors to cut the cardboard. But it turned out OK.

Anne didn't really feel like going out but when she saw me wearing the mask she decided we had to go out. We went to a nearby bar and lots of people complimented me on the mask. When Anne was at the bar buying drinks she couldn't stop laughing as she saw me sitting at a table wearing the mask. So fun was had.

eta: FB pictures for those who haven't seen them: [link]

That really is an wonderous mask, tommyrot.

My workplace just sent around an encouraging email, of the sort they're fond of, that reminds us one way to stay healthy through the holidays is to remember your routine and work hard! Don't just "show up" at work, the healthiest people come in intending to get stuff done! The rah-rah BS is deep around here.

The rah-rah BS is deep around here.

I hate that crap. What it boils down to is:

Management: Here's this cool way we came up with to motivate you to work harder!

Workers: What do we get out of it?

Management: You get to work harder!