I took a few days off last week. I rather needed it. I slept in (for certain personal values of “slept in”), got some stuff done that needed doing (mowed the grass, detailed the car, etc), tried to relax a bit, and then on Friday, I got up in the morning and did the Cap2Cap, riding my bike fifty-three miles in about four hours.

That was a thing I did, and doing it felt good. Yes, I’m a middle-aged man who’s carrying a bit more quarantine weight than he’d prefer, but if I can do that (and that’s just one part of the 800 miles or so I’ve ridden in the last eight weeks or so) I can’t say that I’m in that terrible of shape.

I also celebrated the accomplishments of my children, saw the successful release of a new musical project I was a part of, and spent a pleasant evening with some also-vaccinated friends I haven’t seen in a year in a local biergarten, sharing a drink or three and eating fusion tacos.

It was nice.

Nice enough to take some of the sting out of returning to work Monday morning to an inbox full of self-involved blowhards in the financial department doing their level best to derail what should be a very simple contract option exercise by doing budget things that have no relation to the curriculum of the financial management courses I took in grad school, and arguing with the ledgers-of-record when it they don’t fit their particularly skewed viewpoint.

Even if my nice long weekend took some of the sting off of coming back to the grind, I still wrapped my workday feeling drained and out of spoons. The rainy weather, of course, didn’t help much, though I honestly didn’t have the energy for a ride anyway. Nor did the house being kind of weird, messy work in progress as the reorganization of the sewing room met the re-introduction of another person and their stuff.

About all I had the brainspace for was hiding in my corner of the bedroom with a book and petting a cat.

That, in it’s own way, was also kind of nice.