the still point of the turning world

Had my PDR yesterday, which as ever was much less terrible than I feared. And no really annoying objectives! Also Boss Lady thinks I'm hard-working, so apparently all the days on the struggle bus aren't visible from where she's sitting, which is reassuring... We talked about how I haven't been able to keep on top of things this year, and are hoping that next year will be smoother; it's not that I've been feeling outrageously stressed or anything (most of the time!), and she's been really good about openly acknowledging that I haven't been able to progress A or B because I was working on Z, but I don't like how many things I have sitting on the to-do list, or how often I have to say "no, sorry, I haven't followed up on that" in meetings. I spent quite a lot of time on the big letters project last year keeping other people moving things forward, and now I just... don't have time. Or the projects where I need substantial blocks of time to really dig in to learn what I need on a new system, and I almost never have the brainspace to do it, even though I know that the long-term benefits would be noticeable. We will see what happens.

This year's tendency for terrible things to happen to my friends has not slowed down. The swimming friend mentioned there died on Wednesday, as did friend and former-line-manager L, who was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer a few weeks ago. No one seems to be able to catch a break this year (except Mum, who is doing really well at the moment! So I am grateful for that much).

But the sun has been shining today, a dozen people are coming to my dinner, I bought a ticket to see The Flying Dutchman next month, and while I do have choir all next week it's Brahms' German Requiem, which is fabulous. And Miss H and I are watching Babylon 5 and you guys it is SO GOOD. We're halfway through season one, and even the bad episodes have had redeeming features, but the good ones, wow. "Born to the Purple" and "And the Sky Full of Stars" in particular are great.

Me: I can feel my toes! Awww yissss spring

Me, five seconds later: My face is sweating, awww, why are you like this, spring :-(

This week has mostly been really beautiful weather! I went into the office today without even taking a jacket, which was an excellent choice. Once I got home I took my book outside and sat on my bench for a while (before coming back in in a slight panic that I might have lost my phone on the train... fortunately I had not). The season has absolutely turned now.

I survived the fortnight of Too Many Rehearsals, but next week has a concert and the week after that has Confirmation, plus there's two concerts (for different projects!) in June, so it's not calming down as much as I would like. But I had a very nice long weekend (day off on Friday, bank holiday on Monday, so even the double Sunday rehearsal and 10:30 St N service didn't spoil it). And Miss H and I agreed that because we felt weird and bad about not doing anything at all on the bank holiday we would go out for brunch for the late May one.

And finally, as a throwback to the old days: I took the Which AO3 tag are you? quiz, which gave me the result:

fix-it
you don't have time for this 'making your barbies kiss' bullshit; the world is fucked, and you're here to do something about it! (the thing you're doing about it is making your barbies kiss)

I don't know about fix-it on its own, but I have an extreme weakness for time-travel fix-its (there was a point where I was getting email notifications at least twice a day for one or another of the several Star Wars and The Untamed time-travel fix-its I was subscribed to... good times...)