Hello my ghoulish ghosts,
How was your week? Have you decorated for Halloween? 18 more days! I keep adding little things here and there to the shelves in the main room. My most recent addition was a (very) short string of jack-o-lantern lights.
This week has been full of ups and downs, hence the title of my post: “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” (The ugly part happens on Friday.) I skipped Wednesday because honestly, I couldn't remember what happened that day -- I'm sure there were lots of good things about it. Let's get into it!
MONDAY
The Good: My mom sent me a super cute Halloween card and even cuter tea towel. I made sure to open a Zoom window and dress them into my background! Thank you, Mom!
The Bad: Or, rather, the Embarrassing. Our offices are on the third floor, and as I was trotting up the stairs, I tripped and fell onto the stairs right in front of a couple of people from the transportation department. When I lurched forward, my backpack almost fell over my head. I don’t think they knew what to do – after a beat, they asked me if I was okay while suppressing a chuckle. I shot up so fast, said yes, and raced up the stairs. The memory made me laugh for a few days every time I replayed it in my mind. Dear reader: Tell me your funniest tripping story!
TUESDAY
The Good: My coworker and I rearranged our office space. Instead of having my back to the window, I’m now parallel to it and face Travis’s office. Rearranging my desk opened up the space and it feels much better. In the first photo you'll see that we covered the Sky Studios TV with cardboard because all it does is play the news, and it has only been terrible lately.
The Bad: In the UK, screw top caps are still connected to their bottles after you open them. Kind of handy... kinda not great. I have been drinking chocolate protein shakes for breakfast and there's always a bit of liquid that pools in the cap. When I tipped the bottle to drink from it, I stared at the cap, watching the liquid slowly make its way to the edge. I tried angling the cap away as I was drinking, but it was super awkward and decided to remove the cap. I must have pulled too hard because when the cap broke away, the smoothie erupted out of the bottle and spilled all over my blue shirt. Gah! I went from being worried about a few tiny drops to having brown slashes all the way down my shirt. For the rest of the day, I used a binder clip to hold my sweater closed to try to hide the giant stain. The binder clip waaas subpar. Also, the stains didn't come out! I'll have to get some baking soda and do my Dawn soap/baking soda paste trick -- highly recommend.
THURSDAY
The Good: The production rented a car for me to drive (see below), which will provide me with some freedom. It is a black automatic Build Your Dreams (BYD) electric vehicle. I've never heard of BYD before. Such an odd name. I went for a 45-minute practice drive with the transportation captain, and it went well. He told me that I’m a great driver, I just hug the left curb a bit too close. The roundabouts were fine (there are so many), but the country roads he had me drive down were super narrow -- and some were 60mph! No freaking way. He told me to drive the speed that I was comfortable with, which I appreciated. I drove home that night and found a parking spot in front of my apartment. It was an okay drive home. I only scraped against one curb and one plastic construction barrier (both on the left side).
The Bad: When I walked into the office that morning, I noticed a CAUTION: Wet Floor sign in the kitchen and immediately asked my coworker if there had been a spill. (The week prior, our hot water dispenser leaked and flooded the kitchen, so I thought something had happened again.) My coworker said there had been no spill, so I was relieved! I shouldn't have even mentioned it because I believe I manifested what happened next.
For my morning cup of joe, I decided to make a café au lait (equal parts drip coffee and steamed milk), so all I needed to do was make a pot of coffee and steam some oat milk. Easy, breezy, beautiful, coffee girl. Or so I thought. While my milk was steaming, I set the French press on the small table in the kitchen to push the plunger through the coffee. Similar to the plastic bottle cap incident, my strength was extraordinary, and coffee exploded EVERYWHERE in a manner of seconds. It went all over my sweatshirt, the table, the chair, and on the Wet Floor sign (isn’t it ironic, don’t ya think). I turned to look for a towel and realized that the milk steamer hadn’t shut off automatically and the oat milk was overflowing all over the counter. Holy moly, what a mess. I turned off the steamer, peeled off my soaking wet sweatshirt, and paused to laugh for a second. What a start to the day! Based on Tuesday and Thursday, I should probably stash an extra shirt or two at work.
FRIDAY
The Good: Phone calls with friends
The Bad: Just get to the ugly…
The Ugly: I’ll try to keep this shorter than my actual drive into work. Waze (the navigation app that everyone uses here) lost my car's location very early into my drive to work. It was having a seizure – it would say to turn left and a second later, it would say to turn right. Right. Left. Right. Left. U-Turn. It would tell me to turn where there were no streets, and if there was an actual street, the navigation app street names were different than the street names on the signs (if there was even a sign!). More often than not, my car was a floating arrow in the middle of nowhere, unconnected to any street. It would not recalibrate, and I just kept going straight, unsure what to do. I got very, very turned around. After a couple of hours (yes, you read that right), it reconnected, and I was able to navigate to the correct freeway. Of course, about fifteen minutes later, for some unbeknownst reason, it told me to get off the freeway for a weight check (whyyyyyy) and sent me in the wrong direction again. I felt like Michael Scott in the episode of "The Office" (U.S.) where he follows his GPS, without question, straight into a lake.
It took me 3.5 hours to get to work when it should have taken an hour. (I did try a different app, but it was doing the same thing that Waze was doing.) Suffice it to say, I did not drive home that night. I’m not sure what I’ll do moving forward. I may try to drive again, or I may take public transportation and just leave earlier. Here's a photo of some cool graffiti from WHO KNOWS WHERE along the way.
Wrapping up today's glob (that's a mistype but I'm keeping it), here are some random bits from the last week:
Pretty skies
A few sunsets from back home and several photos from the office. I miss my cemetery.
A moment of feeling understood
I chatted with a friend/co-worker yesterday about some stuff that has been going on at work back home, and after I said something positive in response, they said, “We’re not optimistic people, Mackie. You don’t actually believe that.” I laughed and felt slightly relieved. For a long time now, I've felt like I've had to put a positive spin on everything. I still feel like I have to, but in that moment, I felt understood. I don't think I'm pessimistic. I'm more of a realist, in most circumstances.
Recommendations
Donate: My heart is, and continues to be, with my friend and his family. His sister lost her baby, Daphne, days before her due date. Please donate to help ease the family's financial burden: GoFundMe
Watching (mostly in the background): Monk. Their green screen/roto work is so, so, so cringy to watch
Reading: Death at La Fenice, the first novel by American academic and crime-writer Donna Leon
Listening to: Halloween Classics
Excited about: Meeting with the Coordinator/Teacher of the GOBELINS Paris Production Management for Animation department this week
PDX Tattoo Artists:
Jamie Kaye Lockard – Horseface Tattoo (pink squares)
Douglas Lamb – Gold Sparrow Tattoo (Halloween flash)
Dear reader: Thank you for visiting me and taking the time to read my latest entry. While I didn’t go out into the city on any adventures this weekend (I promise I will!), I did manage to get some rest in between work and chores. I still have a few more things to do, so I'm off.
Please take care, tell the people that you love that you love them, and enjoy your week.
Till next time,
Your WereMack in London
❤️