Thursday, July 26, 2007

Critical Path Detour

With age, experience, and coursework I've gotten better about prioritizing. Instead of doing trivial stuff and missing the big picture, if I write down all the trivial stuff so I don't forget it and do the stuff on the critical path first, things tend to work out better. For instance instead of putting earrings on when I'm naked because I won't forget pants but I might forget jewelry, I write down "earrings" on my list by the door and put my pants on first. If I run out of time for the earrings, so be it. I don't run as late and I remember all the little stuff. Except when I'm running on fumes. Then it's recidivism city.

I decided this afternoon that tomorrow afternoon I'm going to hop in the car and drive up the 101 to San Fransisco. The sign on the highway near my home says it's "394 miles" from here. I'll stay with a friend on the North Bay friday night and saturday through brunch. Around three I head over to Sacramento for a luau with a Cued Speech buddy. I'm not sure where I'm staying saturday night. Perhaps in a tent in the party yard. Sunday morning I'm meeting my NorCal book club ladies to send one of them off to Boston and gradual school. Finally I hop on the 5 and head back.

To get ready, tonight I checked out "Eleven on Top" and "The Bean Trees" audiobooks on CD from the library 5 minutes before they closed. I bought a grass skirt, a lei and some bubbles from the party supply store 5 minutes before they closed. I bought some snack type fruit to take on the drive (including pomegranate fruit roll up - more on that later). I turned on the iPod. I got out a tent and tent related sleeping gear. I picked out outfits for tomorrow and sunday. I packed some toiletries. I got stumped on what to wear saturday.

I have a hand dyed T-shirt from an artist that has wonderful color and suns on it, but is boxy and not flattering. While I love it, I often decide not to wear it. I decided to cut the neck out just above the seam so it doesn't choke me. I stared long and hard at the boxy sleeves. I thought about the book on how to reconfigure T-shirts to your own liking which I read while waiting to purchase Harry Potter. The advice was to use one of the many T-shirts you keep for no reason because you would never wear them anyway to do a test fit with. I remembered sconome's attempt at a fitted shirt and Kvarko's Beaubaton's handmade halloween outfit. Both did tests with less precious material. (And wound up keeping the test pieces.) I dragged out a T shirt from the infinite pile and started marking, pinning, and cutting.

A mere hour later, I have a great new tank shirt with Stone Cat ale on the back (I kept my test piece), I'm burning CDs for the road trip, and I'm still down an outfit for saturday and not packed. This blog was relatively quick, but I need to finish packing in about 15 minutes if I'm going to be awake for my drive tomorrow. Must. stop. making. mix. tapes. Methinks I'll be finishing at lunch.

1 comment:

Janet Webb said...

Glad you got home safely! Thanks for letting me know: loved your car too ... there's something about a Mazda :)