Productive

Today I went in to work at 7am and worked until 11 on what was supposed to be a day off. It was overtime pay, and I could wear jeans and comfortable shoes because I was working at processing return shipments in the stockroom with the funny stock room guys. Getting to be that relaxed at work was a refreshing change of pace! I brought along earbuds and listened to 3 episodes of  This American Life with my cell phone. So for a half work day when I was supposed to be off, it was unexpectedly nice!  Getting off at 11am was pretty great, too. I got a lot of stuff done.

First I ran to Office Depot and got Gregg's main birthday present that I'm super excited about! He's been taking on more and more aquarium design and maintenance jobs....several school and hospital tanks, three nursing homes, the mayor's office, and a couple of individual family aquariums, like at his doctor friend Vinod's house. He still manages the aquarium section at a local pet store, too, and so people regularly approach him there and ask about aquarium services. All of his tanks in public places are beautiful and speak for themselves, and people ask about the person who cares for them. Until now, he's not had any business cards to hand out or leave, and he's mentioned that they would be helpful. So for his birthday, I designed and printed 150 business cards for him! They're a pretty generic template with a little stock drawing of two fish in the upper right hand corner, but I'm still proud of them. I think he's going to really like it that I got that done for him! I'll probably end up buying him an item of clothing or a book as well, but that's his main gift this year.

After getting the cards printed, I went by a store to exchange an item of clothing that didn't fit, then stopped by a little cheap-but-good Mexican restaurant for lunch. They make great taco salads and margaritas, so I had one of each. I really never have a drink at lunchtime on a weekday, so that was a special treat for my productive morning at work and getting the two errands done!

I did one last thing before heading home: I stopped by the voter registration office and did my bit for democracy. I voted early:

I love the sticker. The sticker is very important.

 Funny story: When I stepped up to the smiling young woman behind the counter who had to check my ID she said, "Reason for voting early? Vacation next week?" And I launched into my whole "I'm paranoid there might be trouble on election day" spiel and she was like, "NO, you're on vacation next week" and I was all, "No, seriously, people are being incited to make trouble at polling places next week, it's been on the news, and they're talking about voter intimidation....." and slowly I realized she was trying not to laugh  and nodding to a posted list of acceptable reasons you have to pick from for voting early. She was waiting to make a note in my file.

I felt like a total dumbass.  Ha!

So that was my day. How's your Thursday going?