Sleepy Time Gal

My first day back at work in over a week was tiring. It wasn't really hot when I dashed off to the Acme, but it was killer, cut-the-air-with-a-knife humid. I spent the first hour and a half of my shift doing carts. They were empty when I arrived. We were busy, even early in the morning, and would remain busy all day. A college boy took over the carts around 10:30, allowing me to work on returns and bagging for the rest of the morning.

I was dead tired when I got off, but I couldn't go home just yet. First of all, I needed to get my schedule for the rest of the week. It's pretty much par for the course for this time of year, mid-morning or mid-afternoon, with Tuesday and Friday off again. While continuing with the extra hours might have been nice, it likely won't happen. It's rare that it's this busy during the summer.

I did have some grocery shopping to do. The Acme's having a 40% off Purdue and its brand chicken sale this week. I was able to buy two packs of chicken breasts for the first time in months. Grabbed breaded flounder for dinner. Restocked pancake mix, yogurt, peanut butter, skim milk, broccoli, blueberries (buy 1, get 1), and peaches. I had such a hard time deciding between Talenti on a great sale and a free online coupon for the new low-fat Enlightened Ice Cream, I bought them both. (The Talenti was coconut gelato; the Enlightened was Mint Chocolate Chip.) Plucked a container of mini corn muffins and a package of dessert sponge cake shells off the bakery sale rack.

When I finally got home, I was so tired, I just put everything away, ate a really quick lunch, and went straight to bed. Unfortunately, I was only able to nap for about an hour before a knock on the door jolted me out of my slumber. It was Charlie, who had come to install a stopper on my new door. (Which apparently is so tall, it's banging into those newly whitewashed rafters, cracking them.) I also got him to light the pilot in my oven. He says his men did the burners, but they must have forgotten to go inside.

I gave up on sleep after that. Ended up putting away the remaining books from the living area. Not all of them made it back there. Any Star Wars non-fiction wound up on the Star Wars shelves in my bedroom. Also cleared out one remaining Ever After High doll box and the boxes for the Disney Animator's Collection dolls. They're cute, but they take up room. From now on, I'll only keep the boxes if the toy in question is a genuine collectible.

Went over some of my half-finished Star Wars fanfiction next. Finally decided I'm going to try to complete the 80's action/comedy novel, now titled The Summer Strikes Back. In a riff on 80's summer comedies, Luke and Leia are twins who're visiting their Uncle Ben and his Cottages by the Sea in Ocean View, a fictional Jersey Shore town, during the summer of 1983. Luke wants to focus on becoming a great surfer, like the legendary group the Jedi Knights. Leia is more concerned about the evil corporation, Empire Industries, that's trying to buy the Cottages and half the buildings on the island and tear them down to build a massive resort-mall complex. They find themselves involved with the ragtag group who live at the Cottages and are trying to save their homes, including shady commercial fisherman Hank Solokowski and his northern Brit buddy Charlie Bachman.

The first part from last year is now up at Archive of Our Own. The rest will be coming within the next few weeks!

The Summer Strikes Back at Archive of Our Own

Finished the night with a tasty dinner and the soundtracks for The Pirate Movie and Flashdance as story inspiration. Pan-fried the breaded flounder; added a green salad with oil and vinegar and vegetable spiral pasta tossed with butter, garlic, herbs and Parmesan cheese. Dessert was blueberries in a dessert shell, topped with coconut gelato. Yum! A simple, relaxing meal for a nice, quiet day.

It showered briefly while I was at work, but it didn't really start raining until I was making dinner. We had some pretty noisy storms at one point. It seems pretty quiet now, but the National Weather Service still has a flash flood watch in effect until 6 tomorrow morning. We'll see what happenes.