The song above was the first thing that played after I turned my car on after work and it’s fairly appropriate.  This was a rough week with a lot of stress, pressure, high emotions, and general ugh.  It means I can’t really talk about the details, but I will say I’m going to be happy when next week is over.  Last full week of classes, which means we’re almost at the kids have half days.  Course that means preparing for summer, but I think I can handle the manual labor side of things.

As far as writing goes, I didn’t do anything this week, but I didn’t expect to.  Appointments, work, and chores stopped me from tackling Darwin & the Avenging Elf.  I’ll be starting those hand-edits today with some breaks to play Pokemon Go, which gives me fresh air and exercise.  I’ll be happy to get through the first 3 chapters by the end of the weekend since I’m exhausted.  Any more will be a bonus since I won’t be able to touch it again for at least 1.5 weeks.  Used to be able to bring it to work and do some editing during my breaks, but that hasn’t been possible since early January.  I might still bring a chapter along just in case I get the time, but I won’t hold my breath.

I had my son last weekend, which was a 3-day due to Memorial Day.  We played a bunch of Pokemon Go and watched some movies.  The big outing was last Saturday when we headed to the park for Fleet Week.  All I knew was that they would have some military helicopters, which they do every year.  Never went, but I had the time and we got there early enough for parking.  Took a bunch of videoes of the helicopters coming in for a landing.  There were 5 of them and we got to check them out, but my son was too nervous to get on.  Here’s a video of one of the demonstrations:

Speaking of local events, we have a big one going from today until June 12th.  If anyone is watching the Cricket World Cup then know that I’m shaking my fist at the stadium built in the park.  I know it will bring in money, but the park has been divided by fences and closed to locals for 8 out of the next 12 days.  The roads and traffic are going to be a mess, which makes me worried about my commute.  Last weekend, my son and I ran into groups of who I think were tourists.  All I know is they didn’t speak English and some gave me their phones to take pictures.  I’ll find out later if this is going to impact my ability to get pizza from the place near the park.  At least there’s another park for Pokemon Go . . . It’s a 15-20 minute drive and much smaller, but it’ll have to do.

The only other big thing to talk about is the cooking I did throughout the last two weeks.  I tried 6 new recipes and had a few old ones.  Forgot to take a picture of the classic Sloppy Joe dish (last minute meal) and the Honey Glazed Chicken (new one made during chaos of laundry and homework).  The rest I’ll put as thumbnails below.  Out of the 6 new ones, 5 worked out and one failed.  I will note the failure:

Some of the new ones will be easy to do when I need to make a quick meal.  Others are called Restaurant Style Chicken Lo Mein and take A LOT more prep work than the recipe makes it sound.  Sweet and sour meatballs aren’t much better, but fewer ingredients make it feasible after work.  The lo mein was just a crazy rush of adding, removing, putting back, and mixing. Fun and worth it, but not something I can pull off all the time.  Wish I could have gotten some of the leftovers of that one, but my son claimed it all for his school lunches.  Him asking for something other than Mac & Cheese isn’t something I’m going to mess with.

There isn’t much of a plan for this coming week.  My son has studying, a Regents, and an award ceremony.  I have work and various appointments until Friday.  Both of us are hoping to get a little Pokemon Go in on most days.  Really hope we can do some next weekend since that’s going to be the big studying day.  I’m going to try to get into the August blog posts too since I finished July.  It’s something on the days I can’t get to editing due to only having 30-40 minutes before bed.

Goals of the week:

1. Get some sleep.
2. Help son study for tests.
3. Edit Darwin & the Avenging Elf this weekend
4. Play some Pokemon Go.
5. Get through work.
6. Puzzle work when too stressed.
7. Have pizza.
8. Pick a new show or anime to watch.
9. Start August blog posts.