gifted

Third surprise present (from a different coworker this time) in less than a week! I will need to plan the best days to wear this based on meeting schedules.

second life

I have vivid dreams that usually bear no relation to reality and range from horrifying to bizarre to beautiful. Last night, at the end of one if my dreams, I watched fireworks like no fireworks I've ever seen. They looked like supernovas and galaxies and mushroom clouds and all kinds of huge events of creation and destruction. To cap it off, there was no smoke, and the stars were shining almost as brightly as the fireworks, and my dream self took pictures on my smartphone, and they came out perfectly. It was pretty awesome.

satisfactory

This will do.

weekend plans

Girls' night last night. Now I'm going to try one of my new lounge chairs and read in the back yard until Boyfriend breaks in the new grill to make burgers for dinner.

those aren't groceries

Boyfriend got me something extra when he went out for the weekly shopping this morning.

left field

A friend pinged me today asking me to stop by his office because he had a package for me, which was a fun surprise. This is the result of his random, quirky generosity.

chop

Got to my desk in the Legal building today to see that my coworker recently returned from a vacation in China had gotten an inside joke made into a chop, used it to stamp a piece of paper, framed it, and left it on my desk. Classic.

midweek

It's Hawaiian taco day in the cafe here, which is about five hundred times more delicious than it sounds, and the library truck had three books and three DVDs ready for me to pick up after my appointment at the chiropractor. Pretty good Wednesday so far.

summer

Inspired by the hot, sunny days this week, I motivated myself to go with Boyfriend to buy a big, new grill, grill cover (a late Christmas present from me to him), and a couple of lounge chairs (because I want to be able to read outside). We're ready for summer!

first day

The best thing about working in a dog friendly office is that Fiver can come to work. The next best thing is that people bring in puppies. New puppy in a meeting on its first day at work.

care package

Look what I got in the mail today! The only thing better than gummies or friends is gummies from friends.

doing all right

Project manager told me today that all the feedback she has gotten on me has been very good, and that the team is happy with my work, especially regarding response time. I suppose that's one benefit of my compulsive hatred of having unread messages in my inbox -- it forces me to answer people's questions quickly. It's also a relief to know that I'm doing all right so far. Engineers can be somewhat impatient with legal process, and are not shy about expressing their dissatisfaction when necessary.

goofy

Fiver was randomly extra playful this morning, much more so than he has been since he was a young dog, so we were a bit late to work, due to some important time spent playing tag, wrestling, and digging the dog bed (that last one was just him). He has been pretty amped up all day, too. It's fun to see "young Fiver" make an appearance for a day.

transportation

I went to lunch in an electric golf cart today. Only at Google...

gold star

My bagpipe teacher said I did really well in my lesson today. It's nice to get a little thumbs up sometimes.

new deck

Aren't they fun?

bazinga

Pulled off my first highly public prank in my new building today, which was well received and resulted in a significant contribution to the office party fund by the prankee. Highlight of my day.

watering the floor

I'm so glad we don't own this house, so that we can just laugh when we have to scramble to line up bowls, pots, and in this case, a plant to catch the water that comes in through the leaky roof.

kaboom

First honest-to-goodness thunderstorm I've seen in a while. They're even better with skylights, unless you're my dog.

delivery

New business cards got here today!

acka acka

Another day at work, another Nerf battle, this time with four or five combatants and many innocent bystanders. The office manager left the room for a while... only to return with a Nerf machine gun, which I then used to terrorize the opposition into submission.

overtime

I just stayed at work for two entirely unnecessary but very fun hours to wage an impromptu Nerf gun fight, eat dinner, and gossip with two of the engineers. The Nerf battle took place in a large open plan space with people working in it, and no one minded that we were running around shooting each other, or paid any special attention, except to laugh or point out where my opponent was hiding.

live it up

Sometimes, I decide that it's OK to have a donut for breakfast, and a banana with Nutella for lunch.

o

It has been over a decade since anything I worked on received a standing ovation from a crowd of over 1,000 people. That was pretty cool.

more points

My parents loved Bring Your Parents to Work Day. They got lots of free food, some schwag, a tour, sneak peeks at the self-driving car and Project Glass, and even got to meet one of the founders for a minute. I think I got some more brownie points today.

mom and dad

Tomorrow is "Bring Your Parents to Work Day" here, and my parents are both coming, and are totally stoked. There are speeches, product demos, tours, lunch, schwag, activities, photo ops, and cocktails, so they're going to have fun. It's like Freshman Parents' Weekend without the tuition bills.

announcing

My biggest current project finally went (officially) public today, and seems to be getting good publicity so far:

I've been working pretty hard on this, as has the whole team, and can't wait till it becomes a real product.

Also, last week, our team released this video for Chauffeur, which I work on more tangentially:

city mice

Just realized that this weekend, we are hanging out with a total of six friends who live in the city, yet we somehow convinced them all to come hang out down here in the suburbs, an hour away.